t’s the beginning of a new school year for thousands of Montessori students around the world.
For some, it will be their first experience in a
Montessori classroom; for others, it will be a return to the learning environment that they have
known for years.
Dr. Maria Montessori opened her first school,
Casa dei Bambini, in Rome, Italy more than a
century ago.
After one hundred years, the Montessori approach has proven that it is still vibrant and
adaptive to the challenges of the 21st century.
As parents and educators, who have spent
years around Montessori children, we know
that Montessori works! Despite the proof of
more than one hundred years of positive results, questions remain:
What is Montessori?
How is it different than traditional education?
Will it work for my child?
Isn’t Montessori a very structured environment?
Do Montessori classrooms have structure?
Normalize my child?
Are we crazy to enroll our child in a
Montessori school?
Is Montessori just for young children?
Can our child adjust to a traditional education after years in Montessori?
How can we find/create an elementary or secondary Montessori program for our children?

For more than forty years, I’ve tried to help parents sort all this out, so they could reassure themselves that Montessori isn’t going to leave their
children academically handicapped and unable
to make it in the ‘real’ world. It’s still not easy to
put Montessori into context, when the rest of the
world seems so completely committed to a very
different approach to raising children. Montessori
101 was written to help parents begin to discover
and reconfirm what Montessori children know
— Montessori works!
— Tim Seldin, President
The Montessori Foundation
co-author of The Montessori Way,
The World in the Palm of Her Hand,
and Celebrations of Life; author of How to
Raise an Amazing Child.

There are more than four thousand Montessori schools in the United
States and Canada and thousands more around the world. Montessori
schools are found throughout Western Europe, Central and South
America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and much of Asia.
The movement is widespread in countries such as the Netherlands,
the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Sri Lanka, Korea, and Japan, and it is
beginning to expand into Eastern Europe, the republics of the former
Soviet Union, and China.
There is tremendous diversity within the community of Montessori
schools. Despite the impression that all Montessori schools are the same,
perhaps a franchise, no two Montessori schools are alike.
Across the United States and Canada, we can find Montessori schools
in almost every community. They are found in church basements, converted barns, shopping centers, former public schools, and on expansive
campuses, with enrollments of
hundreds of children and the
air of stature and stability.
We can find them in suburban and inner-city publicschool systems. Montessori
schools are often found in
charming homes — the outcome of the individual vision
of the owner/director. Many
are found in affluent communities, but just as many serve
working-class
neighborhoods
and the poor. We
can find
Montessori in
Head Start programs, child-care
centers in our inner cities, migrantworker camps,
and on Native
American reservations.
Some
Montessori
schools pride
themselves on remaining faithful to
what they see as
Dr. Maria
Montessori’s original vision, while others appreciate flexibility and pragmatic adaptation.
Each school reflects its own unique blend of facilities, programs, personality, and interpretation of Dr. Montessori’s vision.
Most Montessori schools begin with three-year-olds and extend
through the elementary grades. Every year, more schools open middleschool and infant-toddler programs, and Montessori high schools are beginning to appear more frequently.
Montessori schools offer a wide range of programs. Many are focused
on meeting the needs of the working family. Others describe themselves
as college-preparatory programs. Public Montessori programs pride themselves on serving all children, while many independent schools work hard
to find the perfect match of student, school, and family values. The
Montessori Foundation and The International Montessori Council (IMC)
celebrate the diversity to be found among Montessori schools. Just as
each child is unique, so are the schools.

■ Montessori students learn through handson experience, investigation, and research. They become actively engaged in
their studies, rather than passively waiting
to be taught.

What Makes
M on t e s s o r i
D if f e r e n t ?
Montessori schools are not completely
different from other schools. Over the
last century, Dr. Maria Montessori’s
ideas have had a profound and growing influence on education around
the world. However, while individual
elements of her program are finding
their way into more classrooms every
year, there is a cumulative impact
that we see when schools fully implement the entire Montessori model,
which creates something quite distinct.
■ Montessori schools begin with a deep
respect for children as unique individuals. They work from a deep concern for
their social and emotional development.
■ Montessori schools are warm and supportive communities of students, teachers, and parents. Children don’t get lost
in the crowd!
■ Montessori consciously teaches children to be kind and peaceful.
■ Montessori classrooms are bright and
exciting environments for learning.
■ Montessori classes bring children together in multi-age groups, rather than
classes comprised of just one grade level. Normally, they span three age levels.
Children stay with their teachers for
three years. This allows teachers to develop close, long-term relationships
with their pupils, allows them to know
each child’s learning style very well, and
encourages a strong sense of community among the children. Every year,
more non-Montessori schools adopt
this effective strategy.
■ Montessori classrooms are not run by
the teachers alone. Students are taught
to manage their own community and
develop leadership skills and independence.
6

■ Montessori challenges and sets high expectations for all students, not only those
considered ‘gifted.’
■ Students develop self-discipline and an internal sense of purpose and motivation.
After graduation from Montessori, these
values serve them well in high school, college, and in their lives as adults.
■ Montessori schools normally reflect a
highly diverse student body, and their curriculum promotes mutual respect and a
global perspective.
■ Montessori assumes that children are
born intelligent; they simply learn in different ways and progress at their own
pace. The Montessori approach to education is consciously designed to recognize
and address different learning styles, helping students learn to study most effectively. Students progress as they master new
skills, moving ahead as quickly as they are
ready.
■ Montessori students rarely rely on texts
and workbooks. Why? Because many of
the skills and concepts that children learn
are abstract, and texts simply don’t bring
them to life. Also, in the case of reading,
many reading series fail to collect first-rate
and compelling stories and essays; instead, Montessori relies upon hands-on
concrete learning materials and the library, where children are introduced to
the best in literature and reference materials.
■ Learning is not focused on rote drill and
memorization. The goal is to develop students who really understand their schoolwork.

■ Students develop a love for the natural
world. Natural science and outdoor education is an important element of our children’s experience.
■ The Montessori curriculum is carefully
structured and integrated to demonstrate
the connections among the different subject areas. Every class teaches critical
thinking, composition, and research.
History lessons link architecture, the arts,
science, and technology.
■ Students learn to care about others
through community service.
■ Montessori teachers facilitate
learning, coach students along, and come
to know them as friends and mentors.
■ Students learn not to be afraid of making
mistakes; they come to see their mistakes
as natural steps in the learning process.
■ Montessori students learn to collaborate
and work together in learning and on major projects. They strive for their personal
best, rather than compete against one another for the highest grade in their class.

To aid life, leaving it
free, however, to unfold
itself, that is the basic
task of the educator.

Ours was a house for children, rather
than a real school. We had prepared a
place for children, where a diffused culture could be assimilated, without any
need for direct instruction...Yet these
children learned to read and write before they were five, and no one had given them any lessons. At that time, it
seemed miraculous that children of four
and a half should be able to write and
that they should have learned without
the feeling of having been taught.

We puzzled over it for a long time. Only
after repeated experiments did we conclude with certainty that all children are
endowed with this capacity to ‘absorb’
culture. If this be true – we then argued
– if culture can be acquired without effort, let us provide the children with
other elements of culture. And then we
saw them ‘absorb’ far more than reading and writing: botany, zoology, mathematics, geography, and all with the same
ease, spontaneously and without getting
tired.
And so we discovered that education is
not something which the teacher does,
but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to
words, but in virtue of experiences in
which the child acts on his environment.
The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to
prepare and arrange a series of motives
for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.
My experiments, conducted in many different countries, have now been going
on for forty years (Ed. note: now more
than one hundred years), and as the
children grew up, parents kept asking
me to extend my methods to the later
ages. We then found that individual activity is the one factor that stimulates
and produces development, and that
this is not more true for the little ones
of preschool age than it is for the junior,
middle, and upper-school children.”
— Dr. Maria Montessori
The Absorbent Mind

Maria Montessori
is as controversial
a figure in
education today
as she was more than
a century ago.

aria Montessori is as controversial a figure in
EXCERPTED FROM The Montessori Way
education today as she was a half century ago.
BY TIM SELDIN & PAUL EPSTEIN, PH.D.
Alternately heralded as the twentieth century’s
AVAILABLE AT WWW.MONTESSORI.ORG
leading advocate for early childhood education, or dismissed as outdated and irrelevant,
her research and the studies that she inspired helped change the course of education.
Those who studied (her ideas and methods) and went on to make their own contributions include Anna Freud, Jean Piaget, Alfred Adler, and Erik Erikson. Many elements of modern education have been adapted from Montessori’s theories. She is
credited with the development of the open classroom, individualized education, manipulative learning materials, teaching toys, and programmed instruction. In the last
forty-five years, educators in Europe and North America have begun to recognize the
consistency between the Montessori approach with what we have learned from research into child development.
Maria Montessori was an individual ahead of her time. She was born in 1870, in
Ancona, Italy, to an educated but not affluent middle-class family. She grew up in a
country considered most conservative in its attitude toward women, yet, even against
the considerable opposition of her father and teachers, Montessori pursued a scientific education and was the first woman to become a physician in Italy.
As a practicing physician associated with the University of Rome, she was a scientist,
not a teacher. It is ironic that she became famous for her contributions in a field that
she had rejected as the traditional refuge for women, at a time when few professions
were open to them other than homemaking or the convent. The Montessori Method
evolved almost by accident, from a small experiment that Dr. Montessori carried out
on the side. Her genius stems not from her teaching ability but from her recognition
of the importance of what she stumbled upon.
As a physician, Dr. Montessori specialized in pediatrics and psychiatry. She taught at
the medical school of the University of Rome, and, through its free clinics, she came
into frequent contact with the children of the working class and poor. These experiences convinced her that intelligence is not rare and that most newborns come into
the world with human potential that will be barely revealed.
Her work reinforced her humanistic ideals, and she made time in her busy schedule to support various social-reform movements. Early in her career, she began to accept speaking engagements throughout Europe on behalf of the women’s movement,
peace efforts, and child labor-law reform. Montessori became well known and highly

regarded throughout Europe, which undoubtedly contributed to the publicity
that surrounded her schools.
In 1901, Montessori was appointed
Director of the new Orthophrenic
School attached to the University of
Rome, formerly used as the asylum for
the ‘deficient and insane’ children of the
city, most of whom were probably of diminished mental capacity. She initiated
reform in a system that formerly had
served merely to confine mentally handicapped youngsters in empty rooms.
Recognizing her patients’ need for stimulation, purposeful activity, and selfesteem, Montessori insisted that the
staff speak to the inmates with the highest respect. She set up a program to
teach her young charges how to care for
themselves and their environment.
At the same time, she began a meticulous study of all research previously
done on the education of the mentally
handicapped. Her studies led Montessori to the work of two almost forgotten
French physicians of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries: Jean Itard and
Edouard Seguin. Itard is most famous
for his work with the Wild Boy of
Aveyon, a youth who had been found
wandering naked in the forest, having
spent ten years living alone. The boy
could not speak and lacked almost all of
the skills of everyday life. Here apparently was a ‘natural man,’ a human being
who had developed without the benefit
of culture and socialization with his own
kind. Itard hoped from this study to
shed some light on the age-old debate
about what proportion of human intelligence and personality is hereditary and
what proportion stems from learned behavior.

Itard’s experiment was a limited success, for he found the ‘wild boy’ uncooperative and unwilling or unable to
learn most things. This led Itard to postulate the existence of developmental
periods in normal human growth.
During these ‘sensitive periods,’ a child
must experience stimulation or grow up
forever lacking the adult skills and intellectual concepts that he missed at the
stage when they can be readily learned!
Although Itard’s efforts to teach the
‘wild boy’ were barely successful, he followed a methodical approach in designing the process, arguing that all education would benefit from the use of careful observation and experimentation.
This idea had tremendous appeal to the
scientifically trained Montessori and later became the cornerstone of her
Method. From Edouard Seguin,
Montessori drew further confirmation of
Itard’s work, along with a far more specific and organized system for applying it
to the everyday education of the handicapped. Today, Seguin is recognized as
the father of our modern techniques of
special education.
From these two predecessors,
Montessori developed the idea of a scientific approach to education, based on
observation and experimentation. She
belongs to the ‘child study’ school of
thought, and she pursued her work
with the careful training and objectivity
of the biologist studying the natural behavior of an animal in the forest. She
studied her mentally challenged youngsters, listening and carefully noting
everything that they did and said.
Slowly, she began to get a sense of who
they really were and what methods
worked best. Her success was given
widespread notice when, two years after
she began, many of Montessori’s ‘deficient’ adolescents were able to pass the
standard sixth-grade tests of the Italian
public schools. Acclaimed for this ‘miracle,’ Montessori responded by suggesting that her results proved only that
public schools should be able to get dramatically better results with ‘normal’
children.
Unfortunately, the Italian Ministry of
Education did not welcome this idea,
and she was denied access to schoolaged children. Frustrated in her efforts
to carry the experiment on with publicschool students, in 1907, Montessori
jumped at the chance to coordinate a
day-care center for working-class children, who were too young to attend
public school.
Montessori child carrying soup in classrom, c. 1912

8

This first Casa dei Bambini, or Children’s House, was located in the worst
slum district of Rome, and the conditions Montessori faced were appalling.
Her first class consisted of sixty children
from two through five years of age,
taught by one untrained caregiver. The
children remained at the center from
dawn to dusk, while their parents
worked. They had to be fed two meals a
day, bathed regularly, and given a program of medical care. The children
themselves were typical of extreme inner-city poverty conditions. They entered the Children’s House on the first
day crying and pushing, exhibiting generally aggressive and impatient behavior.
Montessori, not knowing whether her
experiment would work under such
conditions, began by teaching the older
children how to help with the everyday
tasks that needed to be done. She also
introduced the manipulative perceptual
puzzles that she had used with the mentally challenged children.
The results surprised her, for unlike
the other children, who had to be prodded to use the materials, these little
ones were drawn to the work she introduced. Children, who had wandered
aimlessly the week before, began to settle down to long periods of constructive
activity. They were fascinated with the
puzzles and perceptual training devices.
But, to Montessori’s amazement, the
young children took the greatest delight
in learning practical everyday living
skills, reinforcing their independence.
Each day, they begged her to show
them more, even applauding with delight when Montessori taught them the
correct use of a handkerchief. Soon the
older children were taking care of the
school, assisting their teacher with the
preparation and serving of meals and
the maintenance of a spotless environment. Their behavior as a group
changed dramatically, from street
urchins running wild to models of grace
and courtesy. It was little wonder that
the press found such a human-interest
story appealing and promptly broadcast
it to the world.
Montessori education is sometimes
criticized for being too structured and
academically demanding of young children. Montessori would have laughed at
this suggestion. She often said, “I studied my children, and they taught me
how to teach them.” Montessori made a
practice of paying close attention to
their spontaneous behavior, arguing
that only in this way could a teacher
know how to teach. Traditionally,

schools pay little attention to children as
individuals, other than to demand that
they adapt to our standards.
Montessori argued that the educator’s job is to serve the child, determining what is needed to make the greatest
progress. To her, a child who fails in
school should not be blamed, any more
than a doctor should blame a patient
who does not get well fast enough. It is
the job of the physician to help us find
the way to cure ourselves and the educator’s job to facilitate the natural
process of learning.
Montessori’s children exploded into
academics. Too young to go to public
school, they begged to be taught how to
read and write. They learned to do so
quickly and enthusiastically, using special manipulative materials Dr. Montessori designed for maximum appeal and
effectiveness. The children were fascinated by numbers. To meet this
interest, the mathematically inclined
Montessori developed a series of concrete mathematical learning materials
that has never been surpassed. Soon,
her four- and five-year-olds were performing four-digit addition and subtraction operations and, in many cases,
pushing on even further. Their interests
blossomed in other areas as well, compelling an overworked physician to
spend night after night designing new
materials to keep pace with the children
in geometry, geography, history, and
natural science.
The final proof of the children’s interest came shortly after her first school became famous, when a group of well intentioned women gave them a marvelous collection of lovely and expensive
toys. The new gifts held the children’s
attention for a few days, but they soon
returned to the more interesting learning materials. To Montessori’s surprise,
children who had experienced both,
preferred work over play most of the
time. If she were here today, Montessori
would probably add:

Children read and do advanced mathematics in Montessori schools not because we
push them, but because this is what they do
when given the correct setting and opportunity. To deny them the right to learn because
we, as adults, think that they shouldn’t is illogical and typical of the way schools have
been run before.
Montessori evolved her Method
through trial and error, making educated guesses about the underlying meaning of the children’s actions. She was
quick to pick up on their cues and con-

A Montessori classroom in a Franciscan Convent c. 1912
stantly experimented with the class.
For example, Montessori tells of the
morning when the teacher arrived late
to find that the children had crawled
through a window and gone right to
work. At the beginning, the learning materials, having cost so much to make,
were locked away in a tall cabinet. Only
the teacher had a key and would open it
and hand the materials to the children
upon request. In this instance, the
teacher had neglected to lock the cabinet the night before. Finding it open,
the children had selected one material
apiece and were working quietly. As
Montessori arrived, the teacher was
scolding the children for taking them
out without permission. She recognized
that the children’s behavior showed that
they were capable of selecting their own
work and removed the cabinet and replaced it with low, open shelves on
which the activities were always available
to the children. Today, this may sound
like a minor change, but it contradicted
all educational practice and theory of
that period.
One discovery followed another, giving Montessori an increasingly clear
view of the inner mind of the child. She
found that little children were capable of
long periods of quiet concentration,
even though they rarely showed signs of
it in everyday settings. Although they
were often careless and sloppy, they responded positively to an atmosphere of
calm and order. Montessori noticed that
the logical extension of the young
child’s love for a consistent and often-repeated routine is an environment in
which everything has a place.
Her children took tremendous delight in carefully carrying their work to
and from the shelves, taking great pains
not to bump into anything or spill the
smallest piece. They walked carefully
through the rooms, instead of running
wildly, as they did on the streets.
Montessori discovered that the environment itself was all important in obtain-

ing the results that she had observed. Not
wanting to use school desks, she had carpenters build child-sized tables and
chairs. She was the first to do so, recognizing the frustration that a little child experiences in an adult-sized world.
Eventually she learned to design entire schools around the size of the children. She had miniature pitchers and
bowls prepared and found knives that fit
a child’s tiny hand. The tables were lightweight, allowing two children to move
them alone. The children learned to control their movements, disliking the way
the calm was disturbed when they
knocked into things. Montessori studied
the traffic pattern of the rooms as well, arranging the furnishings and the activity
area to minimize congestion and tripping. The children loved to sit on the
floor, so she bought little rugs to define
their work areas, and the children quickly
learned to walk around them.
Through the years, Montessori
schools carried this environmental engineering throughout the entire building
and outside environment, designing
child-sized toilets and low sinks, windows
low to the ground, low shelves, and
miniature hand and garden tools of all
sorts. Some of these ideas were eventually adapted by the larger educational community, particularly at the nursery and
kindergarten levels. Many of the puzzles
and educational devices now in use at the
preschool and elementary levels are direct copies of Montessori’s original ideas.
However, there is far more of her work
that never entered the mainstream, and
educators, who are searching for new,
more effective answers, are finding the
accumulated experience of the
Montessori community to be of great interest.
Maria Montessori’s first Children’s
House received overnight attention, and
thousands of visitors came away amazed
and enthusiastic. Worldwide interest
surged, as she duplicated her first school
in other settings, with the same results.
9

Montessori captured the interest and imagination of national leaders and scientists,
mothers and teachers, labor leaders and
factory owners. As an internationally respected scientist, Montessori had a rare
credibility in a field, where many others
had promoted opinions, philosophies, and
models that have not been readily duplicated. The Montessori Method offered a systematic approach that translated very well
to new settings. In the first thirty-five years
of the twentieth century, the Montessori
Method seemed to offer something for
everyone. Conservatives appreciated the
calm, responsible behavior of the little children, along with their love for work.
Liberals applauded the freedom and spontaneity. Many political leaders saw it as a
practical way to reform the outmoded
school systems of Europe and North
America, as well as an approach that they
hoped would lead to a more productive
and law-abiding populace. Scientists of all
disciplines heralded its imperical foundation, along with the accelerated achievement of the little children. Montessori rode
a wave of enthusiastic support that should
have changed the face of education far
more dramatically than it has.
Montessori’s prime productive period
lasted from the opening of the first
Children’s House in 1907 until the1930s.
During this time, she continued her study
of children and developed a vastly expanded curriculum and methodology for the elementary level as well.
Montessori schools were set up
throughout Europe and North America,
and Dr. Montessori gave up her medical
practice to devote all of her energies to advocating the rights and intellectual potential of all children. During her lifetime, Dr.
Montessori was acknowledged as one of
the world’s leading educators. Modern education moved beyond Montessori, adapting only those elements of her work that fit
into existing theories and methods.
Ironically, the Montessori approach cannot
be implemented as a series of piecemeal reforms. It requires a complete restructuring
of the school and the teacher’s role. Only
recently, as our understanding of child development has grown, have we rediscovered how clear and sensible was her insight.
Today, there is a growing consensus
among psychologists and developmental
educators that many of her ideas were
decades ahead of their time. As the movement gains support and continues to
spread into the American public school sector, one can readily say that Montessori, begun more than one hundred years ago, is a
remarkably modern approach.
10

M on
t
e
s
s
o
r
i
M yt
h
s
b y
Maren Schmidt &
Dana Schmidt
Each year, during the start of school, teachers and
administrators try to explain to new parents the
essence of the term Montessori. In this article, we’ll
try to explain what Montessori is and is not, dispelling, we hope, a few misperceptions about
Montessori education in the process.
What Montessori Is
In its simplest form, Montessori is the
philosophy of child and human development as presented by Dr. Maria
Montessori, an Italian physician who
lived from 1870 to 1952.
In the early 1900s, Dr. Montessori
built her work with mentally challenged
children on the research and studies of
Jean Itard (1774-1838), best known for
his work with the “Wild Boy of Aveyron”
and Edward Seguin (1821-1882), who
expanded Itard’s work with deaf children. In 1907, Dr. Montessori began using her teaching materials with normal
children in a Rome tenement and discovered what she called “the Secret of
Childhood.”
The Secret? Children love to be involved in self-directed purposeful activities. When given a prepared environment of meaningful projects, along with
the time to do those tasks at his or her
own pace, a child will choose to engage
in activities that will create learning in
personal and powerful ways.
Over the past one hundred years
Montessori classrooms all over the
world have proven that, when correctly
implemented, Dr. Montessori’s philosophy works for children of all socio-economic circumstances and all levels of
ability. In a properly prepared
Montessori classroom, research shows
that children learn faster and more easily than in traditional schools.
However, the implementation of

Montessori philosophy is a school’s
biggest challenge. There are many factors to consider when putting theory
into practice, for example: the individual children in the classroom, their
ages and emotional well-being; parent
support and understanding of
Montessori philosophy; and the training and experience of teachers, assistants, and administrators. These are
only a few of the elements that create
a Montessori school.
Because of this, Montessori
schools come in all shapes and sizes
including the small in-home class for a
few children to schools with hundreds of students, from newborns
through high school.
While schools come in many
shapes and sizes, all successful
Montessori classrooms require three
key elements:
1. Well-trained adults;
2. Specially prepared environments; and
3. Children’s free choice of activity
within a three-hour work cycle.
Finding the right school for your
family – whether it’s Montessori, public, parochial, alternative, traditional or
home school – requires a bit of investigative work and an understanding of
the needs and concerns you have for
your family. Being clear about what
Montessori education is and what it is
not can help you make an informed
decision.

What Montessori Is Not
In my twenty-five years in Montessori
education – as a parent, school employee, volunteer, trainee, teacher, school
founder, and school director – time after
time, I’ve come to fresh and deeper understandings of Montessori philosophy
and the process of human development
and education.
My first encounter with Montessori
was less than positive. As a college student, I frequently visited my family after
my four younger siblings’ school day
had ended. Our family tradition was to
have a snack together after school.
Friends and neighbors were always welcomed.
The neighbor girls, ages four, five and
six, frequently joined the group. They
would barge into my parents’ home and
head straight for the refrigerator. No
knock on the door, no hello. They inhaled huge amounts of food with neither manners nor thanks. Their lack of
decorum appalled me.
The neighbor girls’ grandmother
chatted with me about how wonderful
the girls’ Montessori school was and
how much the girls learned there. I attributed the girls’ little savage conduct
to their Montessori school. If a school
would put up with that kind of behavior,
I figured it couldn’t be any good.
A few years passed, and I had children of my own. Our friends and coworkers recommended the local
Montessori school to my husband and
me. Because of my experiences with the
neighbor’s children, I responded negatively to my friends’ suggestions. I began
to notice, though, that our friends’ children were well mannered, articulate,
and a joy to be around. Hum? So what
was up with Montessori?
My mother helped clear up my misperceptions. The neighbor’s girls, even
though they lived in an expensive
home, were suffering the effects of a
newly divorced and stressed mother attending law school. The girls were
starved for food, attention, and adult
guidance. Their behavior was a reflection, not of their Montessori schooling,
but of the turmoil in their home.
This experience showed me that
what we may think are the effects, negative or positive, of a Montessori school,
may be something quite different.
Let me use my twenty-five years of
Montessori experience to help dispel a
few misconceptions about Montessori
schools, some of which I’ve held myself.
❦❦❦
11

❋

❋

Myth #1

Myth #3

M on
t
e
s
s
o
r
i
is just for
rich kids.

M on
t
e
s
s
o
r
i
is for
learning-
d is
a
b
l
e
d
c hi
l
d
r
e
n
.

Many Montessori schools in the
United States are private schools,
begun in the early to mid-1960s, a
time when most public education
didn’t offer kindergarten and
only 5 percent of children went
to preschool, compared with the
67 percent reported in the 2000
census. When many Montessori
schools were established, private
preschools might have been an
option only for those in urban
well-to-do areas, thus giving the impression that only wealthy families could afford
Montessori schools.The first schools that Montessori established were in the slums
of Rome, for children left at home while parents were out working, and certainly
not for rich kids.
Today, in the United States, there are over 300 public Montessori schools and
100 charter schools that offer taxpayer-financed schooling, along with thousands of
private, not-for-profit Montessori programs that use charitable donations to offer
low-cost tuition.
Montessori education,
through these low-cost options, is available to families
interested in quality education. Many private, high-dollar schools offer scholarships,
and some states offer childcare credits and assistance to
low-income families.

❋

Myth #2

M on
t
e
s
s
o
r
i
is just for
g if
t
e
d
k id
s
.

12

Montessori is for all children. Since
Montessori preschools begin working
with three-year-olds in a prepared learning environment, Montessori students
learn to read, write, and understand the
world around them in ways that they can
easily express. To the casual observer,
Montessori students may appear advanced for their age, leading to the assumption that the schools cater to gifted
children.
In reality, a Montessori school offers
children of differing abilities ways to express their unique personalities, through
activities using hands-on materials, language, numbers, art, music, movement
and more. Montessori schooling helps
each child develop individuality in a way
that accentuates his or her innate intelligence. Montessori schools can help make
all kids ‘gifted’ kids.

It is true that Dr. Montessori began her
work with children who were institutionalized, due to physical or mental impairments. When using her methods and materials with normal children, Montessori discovered that children learned more quickly
using her teaching methods.
There are some Montessori schools and
programs that cater specifically to children
who have learning challenges. In many
Montessori schools, however, children with
special needs are included, when those requirements can be met with existing school
resources.

❋

Myth #4
M on
t
e
s
s
o
r
i
is affiliated with
t he
C at
h
o
l
i
c
C hu
r
c
h
.
Like many preschools,
some Montessori programs may be sponsored
by a church or synagogue,
but most Montessori
schools are established as
independent entities. Conversely, a school
might be housed in a church building and
not have any religious affiliation. Since
Montessori refers to a philosophy, and not
an organization, schools are free to have
relationships with other organizations, including churches.
Some of the first Montessori programs
were sponsored by Catholic or other religious organizations. Dr. Montessori was
Catholic and worked on developing religious, educational, hands-on learning experiences for young children. The
Montessori movement, however, has no
religious affiliations.
Montessori schools all over the world
reflect the specific values and beliefs of the
staff members and families that form each
school community. Around the world,
there are Montessori schools that are part
of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and other religious communities.

❋

Myth #5

In Montessori
c la
s
s
r
o
o
m
s
,
children run
around and do
whatever they
w an
t
.

When looking at a Montessori classroom you may see 25 or more children involved in
individual or small group activities. It is possible that each child will be doing something different. At first glance, a classroom can look like a hive of bumblebees.
If you take the time to follow the activities of two children, over the course of a
three-hour work period, you should observe a series of self-directed activities. The
children aren’t running wild. They are each involved in self-selected w o r k, designed to
build concentration and support independent learning.
Choosing what you do is not the same as doing whatever you want. A well-known
anecdote, about Montessori students doing what they like, comes from E.M.
Standing’s book, Maria Montessori – Her Life and Work:

“A rather captious and skeptical visitor to a Montessori class once buttonholed one of the children – a
little girl of seven – and asked: ‘Is it true that in this school you are allowed to do anything you like?’ ‘I
don’t know about that,’ replied the little maiden cautiously, ‘but I do know that we like what we do!’”

❋

Myth #6

Montessorians are
a selective clique.
One definition of a clique is: an exclusive circle
of people with a common purpose. Many
Montessori teachers could be accused of this
because of their intense desire to be of service
in the life of a child, coupled with the teacher’s
knowledge of child development. And while
many schools have tight-knit communities, they
are not exclusive. You should look for a school
where you and your family feel welcomed.
For many years, Montessori training programs were only available in a few larger cities.
Becoming certified required prospective teachers to be determined and dedicated, as relocating for a year of study was often required. Now
Montessori teacher’s training is mainstream and
more accessible, with colleges and universities
offering graduate programs in Montessori education, in conjunction with Montessori training

centers. Loyola College in
Maryland, New York University,
and Xavier University are only a
few of the many institutions of
higher learning that include
Montessori teacher’s training.
Dr. Montessori’s books, full
of Italian scientific and psychological terminology, translated
into the British English of the
early 1990s, can be difficult for
the modern reader to follow.
To parents the use of
Montessori-specific terms and
quotes may at times take on esoteric tones of an elusive inner circle. The enthusiasm and dedication evident in the work of many Montessorians might be misinterpreted as excluding to uninitiated newcomers.
My experience with Montessori teachers and administrators has been that they
are eager to share their knowledge with others. Just ask.

❋

A Montessori
classroom is too
u ns
t
r
u
c
t
u
r
e
d
for my child.

The Montessori classroom is very structured, but that structure is quite different from a traditional preschool.
Montessori observed that children naturally tend to use self-selected, purposeful activities to develop themselves. The
Montessori classroom, with its prepared
activities and trained adults, is structured to promote this natural process of
human development.
Students new to the Montessori
classroom, who may or may not have
been in a traditionally structured school,
learn to select their own work and complete it with order, concentration, and
attention to detail. Montessorians refer
to children, who work in this independent, self-disciplined way as ‘normalized,’ or using the natural and normal
tendencies of human development.
Many traditional preschools work on
a schedule where the entire classroom
is involved in an activity for fifteen minutes, then moves on to the next activity.
This structure is based on the belief that
young children have a short attention
span of less than twenty minutes per activity.

Myth #7
Montessori classrooms are too structured.

Parents sometimes see the Montessori
concept of work as play as overly structured. The activities in the classroom are
referred to as work, and the children are
directed to choose their work. However,
the children’s work is very satisfying to
them, and they make no distinction between work and play. Children almost
always find Montessori activities both
interesting and fun.
Each Montessori classroom is lined
with low shelves filled with materials.
The teacher, or guide, shows the chil-

14

❋

Myth #8

dren how to use the materials by giving
individual lessons. The child is shown a
specific way to use the materials but is
allowed to explore them by using them
in a variety of ways, with the only limitations being that materials may not be
abused or used to harm others.
For example, the Red Rods, which
are a set of ten painted wooden rods up
to a meter long and about an inch thick,
are designed to help the child learn to
perceive length in ten centimeter increments. The Red Rods aren’t to be used

as Jedi light sabers. Obviously, sword
fights with the Red Rods are a danger
to other children, as well as damaging
to the rods, which cost over $200.00 a
set.
In cases where materials are being
abused or used in a way that may hurt
others, the child is stopped and gently
and kindly redirected to other work.
Unfortunately, some parents see
this limitation on the use of the material as ‘too structured,’ since it may not
allow for fantasy play.

Work consists
of whatever a
body is
obliged to do.
Play consists
of whatever a
body is not
obliged to do.
~ Mark Twain

A typical morning might look something like this:

Traditional Preschool Schedule
8:30 to 8:45
8:45 to 9:00
9:00 to 9:15
9:15 to 9:30
9:30 to 9:45
9:45 to 10:15
10:15 to 10:30
10:30 to 10:45
10:45 to 11:00
11:00 to 11:15
11:15 to 11:30

Morning circle and singing
Work with Play Dough™
Letter of the day work
Crayon work
Snack
Outside time
Story time
Work with puzzles
Practice counting to 20
Craft project: cut out a
paper flower
Circle time to dismissal

The above schedule reflects structure created by and dependent upon the teacher.

In the Montessori classroom each child creates his or
her own cycle of work based on individual interests. This
cycle of self-directed activity lengthens the child’s attention
span. The teacher, instead of directing a group of children
in one activity, quietly moves from child to child, giving individual lessons with materials. The teacher or assistant
may lead a few small-group activities, such as reading a
book out loud, cooking, or gardening with two to six children.
The Montessori classroom is a vibrant and dynamic
learning environment, where structure is created by each

Arrive, hang up coat, and greet teacher
Choose puzzle. Work and rework three
times.
Return puzzle to shelf. Choose sandpaper
numbers.
Trace sandpaper numbers.
Return numbers to shelf. Prepare
individual snack. Eat snack with friend.
Choose and work with scissor cutting
lesson.
Choose and work with knobbed cylinders.
Clean up time and group time with singing.

child selecting his or her activity, doing it, and returning the
activity to the shelf. After the successful completion of a task,
there is a period of self-satisfaction and reflection, then the
child chooses the next activity.
Montessorians call this rhythm of activity a work cycle.
Stephen Covey, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,
refers to the habit of a work cycle as creating an upward
spiral of growth and change. Covey describes a spiraling
process of learn – commit – do that empowers us to move
toward continuous improvement, both as children and
adults.

Montessorians refer to the child’s activities in the classroom as work. The children also refer to what they do in the
classroom as their work. When your
three-year-old comes home from school
talking about the work he did today, he
can sound way too serious for a kid you
just picked up at preschool.
What adults often forget is that children have a deep desire to contribute
meaningfully, which we deny when we

regard everything they do as ‘just’ play.
With our adult eyes, we can observe the
child’s ‘joyful work’ and expressions of
deep satisfaction as the child experiences “work as play.”
Consider this. You start a new job.
You arrive the first day, full of enthusiasm, and ready to contribute to the success of your work group. You’re met at
the door by your new boss and told,
“Go outside and play. We’ll let you know
when it’s time for lunch and time to go
home.”
Ouch!
But that’s exactly what we do to our
children when we dismiss their desires
to contribute to their own well-being
and to the common good of home or
school. Montessori schools create environments, where children enjoy working on activities with grace and dignity.
Montessori children often describe feelings of satisfaction and exhilaration
upon completing tasks that we might
have considered as only ‘play.’

❋

Myth #10

M on
t
e
s
s
o
r
i
doesn’t
allow for
c re
a
t
i v
i t
y
.

Creativity means “to bring something into existence.” First we have an idea. Then
we use our imagination, thoughts, and skills to bring these ideas into being. The
Montessori classroom nourishes the creative skills of writing, drawing, painting,
using scissors, modeling clay, gluing, etc. to enable children to express their
thoughts and ideas in genuine and unique ways.
When I was in kindergarten, we were all given a coloring sheet of a caboose. I
colored my caboose green. My teacher told me that cabooses were red. As I looked
around, all the other children’s cabooses were red. My classmates laughed at my
green caboose. I felt the tears in my chest.
Twenty-four years later, I saw another green caboose, attached to the end of a
Burlington-Northern train. “Yes!” I wanted to shout back to my kindergarten class.
“There are green cabooses.”
What does a green caboose have to do with creativity?
I wasn’t trying to be creative with my green caboose. I was trying to express myself, because I had seen a green caboose.
Montessori classrooms allow for safe self-expression through art, music, movement, and manipulation of materials and can be one of the most creative and satisfying environments for a child to learn to experiment and express his or her innerself.
16

Kids can’t be
kids at
M on
t
e
s
s
o
r
i .
Somehow, our expectations as parents,
having witnessed temper tantrums in
restaurants and stores, create a view of
children as naturally loud, prone to violent behavior, disrespectful of others,
clumsy, and worse.
In a well-run Montessori classroom,
though, one might be prone to think
that kids aren’t being kids.
When you see twenty-five to thirty
children acting purposefully, walking

calmly, talking in low voices to each other, carrying glass objects, reading and
working with numbers in the thousands, you might think the only way this
behavior can occur is by children being
regimented into it. I remember observing Dana, then fifteen-months-old, moving serenely around her infant
Montessori classroom. She sure didn’t
act that way at home.
As I observed Dana’s infant-toddler
class in action, I saw the power of this
child-friendly environment. As the children moved from activity to activity, day
by day their skills and confidence grew.
Lessons in grace and courtesy helped
the children with social skills, as please,
thank you, and would you please became some of these toddlers’ first
words.
When Dana was three, one of her favorite activities was the green bean cutting lesson. After carefully washing her
hands, she would take several green
beans out of the refrigerator, wash
them, cut them into bite-sized pieces
with a small knife, and arrange them on
a child-sized tray. She carried the tray
around the classroom, asking her classmates, “Would you like a green bean?”
As they looked up from their work, the
other children would reply, Yes, please,
or No, thank you.
Dana, now in her mid-twenties, still
remembers that work with deep satisfaction. Children show us, when given a
prepared environment, a knowledgeable adult, and a three-hour work cycle,
the natural state of the child is to be a
happy, considerate, and contented person. A kid is most like a kid when he or
she is engaged in the work of the Montessori classroom.

❋

Myth #12

If Montessori is
so great, why
aren’t former
students better
known?

Most of us associate our career success with
our colleges. Not too many people come out
and say, “When I was three years old I went
to Hometown Montessori School, and that
made all the difference.”
Here are a few well-known people who
remember their Montessori school connections and consider their experiences there
vital.
Julia Child, the cook and writer, who
taught Americans to love, prepare and pronounce French dishes, attended Montessori
school.
Peter Drucker, the business guru, who
has been said to be one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, was a
Montessori student.
Alice Waters, the chef of Chez Panisse
fame and creator of The Edible Schoolyard
project, was a Montessori teacher.
Anne Frank’s famous diary was a natural
extension of Anne’s Montessori elementary
school experience.
Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher,
corresponded with Maria Montessori about
teaching methods.
Larry Page and Sergei Brin, founders of
Google, Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon, and
Steve Case of America Online all credit
Montessori schooling to their creative success.
Montessori schools are focused on helping children become self-directed individuals, who can, and do, make a difference in
their families, in their communities and in
their world – famous or not.
And that’s not a myth.

very discipline has its specific
jargon. Lawyers, doctors, car
mechanics, computer technicians, nurses, gardeners, and
gymnasts, each have vocabulary that is unique to their
area of expertise.
So it is with Montessori education. Here is a handy reference for the language that
is used in Montessori writings and discussions, which,
we hope, will help you understand what goes on in
your child’s Montessori classroom.
18

Adolescence
Adolescence refers to the ages of twelve to
eighteen years. There are two sub-stages of development during this period (ages twelve to fifteen and fifteen to eighteen), with each substage having different learning requirements
and environments, distinct from elementary
and each other.

Instead, the term cosmic education, or
connecting the child to the idea of the cosmos,
was used. Back in the 1970s and 80s, the term
seemed a bit ‘out there’ for mainstream use.
Now there is more of a cultural awareness that
everything is, indeed, connected to everything
else, and the term cosmic education seems to
better communicate the idea of giving the
child a vision of the cosmos.

Apparatus

Didactic Materials

The word apparatus is used interchangeably
with the terms Montessori materials, or didactic materials.

See Montessori Materials.
Directress

Auto-Education

See Montessori Teacher.

Sorry, gentlemen, this has nothing to do with
cars. The idea of auto-education is linked with
the concept of self-construction in Montessori
philosophy, and some people view it as the
same idea. There is a nuance though that with
auto-education a person consciously takes responsibility for his or her learning. Self-construction has a connotation of activities, or
work, being unconsciously performed by children to build foundational skills before the age
of six years.

Elementary Community
The elementary community is comprised of all
the children, teachers, parents, and adults in a
school’s elementary classrooms or environments. As community relationships are established, other people involved in strategic relationships with the school, such as museum docents, librarians, storekeepers, and master gardeners are considered part of the community.
Elementary Environment

Casa or Casa Dei Bambini
Casa Dei Bambini is not the name of a popular
Mexican Restaurant. Casa, or house in Italian,
refers to the environment for children ages
three to six years. Dr. Montessori referred to the
first schools as Casa Dei Bambini, or Children’s
Houses. Many schools use the term Casa, or
Children’s House, to refer to the classroom for
children ages three to six years. Some schools
may also refer to this age group as the
preschool or primary group.

The elementary environment is designed for
children ages six to twelve years. There may be
a lower elementary, made up of six- to nineyear-olds, and an upper elementary, comprised of nine- to twelve-year-olds. Elementary
classrooms for six- to twelve-year-olds are also
found. The elementary environment includes
an outdoor component but also expands to
encompass the children going out to explore
their local community’s museums, libraries,
and other facilities outside the school campus.

Children’s House

Environment

See above.

The term environment in Montessori terms is
used to describe a prepared environment that
meets the learning needs of the age group it
serves.
You will hear the words environment and
classroom used interchangeably. A Montessori
classroom, or environment, does not look anything like a traditional classroom, though. A
primary environment for three- to six-yearsolds is different than an elementary environment, which differs from an adolescent environment.

Cosmic Education
Dr. Montessori saw the use of the imagination
as the key to learning for children ages six to
twelve . Montessori urged us to give the child a
“vision of the universe,” because within this
view, there would be something that would fire
each individual child’s imagination, and, therefore, set the child on a path of true learning. As
children pursue areas of interest, all subjects of
learning are touched upon, due to the interconnectedness of everything in the cosmos.
Dr. Montessori may have preferred to use
the term universal education, but that phrase
was already in use in the United States at the
time, relating to educator John Dewey’s idea of
free public education for everyone.

Erdkinder
Dr. Montessori envisioned an Erdkinder
(German for child of the earth) environment
for the young adolescent, ages twelve to fifteen
years, to fulfill a developmental need to con-

nect and form a society of his or her time
and place. This vision of Erdkinder encompasses the idea of a working farm and much
more. For the past ten years, the farm-school
concept, or Erdkinder, is being successfully
implemented in the United States.
Four Planes of Development
Dr. Montessori saw human beings going
through four planes, or stages, of development, with each plane having unique characteristics and opportunities for learning.
First Plane:
Second Plane:
Third Plane:
Fourth Plane:

From birth to 6 years
From 6 to 12 years
From 12 to 18 years
From 18 to 24 years

Freedom and Responsibility
The idea that freedom follows responsibility
is an important concept in Montessori philosophy. We give opportunities to “respond
with ability,” and corresponding freedoms
are given. For example, if you remember to
bring your coat, then you will be given the
freedom to go outside when it is cold. If you
act responsibly in the elementary classroom,
then you can be granted the freedom to go
outside of the classroom into the larger
community. See going out.
Freedom within Limits
The concept of allowing freedom within limits is a crucial idea in Montessori philosophy.
To the casual observer, or new teacher, freedom may appear to allow a child to do anything he or she would like.
Freedom is limited by the level of ability
and responsibility a child has. We give the
child the freedom to move freely about the
classroom. This freedom may be taken away,
if the child uses the freedom to go around
hitting other children, disrupting other’s
work, damaging materials, or otherwise not
choosing a purposeful activity that will lead
to a normalizing event. The child is free to
act within the limits of purposeful activity.
Going Out
The idea of going out is very different than
the typical field trip that traditional elementary students take. Students in a Montessori
elementary classroom will go out in small
groups of two to perhaps six students into
the community to gather information or experiences in areas of interest. For example,
some schools are able to let students walk a
few blocks to the city library. Other schools
allow students to take public transportation
19

to go to museums, or college campuses to
visit with experts in their field of study.
Others have a system of parent volunteers
that drive and chaperone going-out students.
A going-out program is possible due to
the child developing freedom and responsibility over a period of many years. Students
must earn the right to go out.
Guide
See Montessori Teacher
Guido
See Montessori Teacher
Horme
Not ham in a can. Dr. Montessori used this
psychological term from Sir Percy Nunn.
Horme means life force. (From the Greek,
horme, meaning impetus or impulse.) If the
life force is allowed to develop smoothly,
without obstacles impairing its force, normalization occurs. When the horme is
blocked, we see deviations in the life force,
and the process of normalization does not
occur. If the hormic force is strong and deviated, we may see a child with powerful emotional and physical outbursts. If the horme is
weak in a child, we may observe boredom,
laziness, and the need to be constantly entertained.
Human Tendencies
Dr. Montessori saw that there were certain
characteristics that make us human.
Depending on our individual natures, sensitive periods of learning, or different psychological characteristics, the following activities
define us as human:
Activity
Becoming
Belonging
Exploration
Orientation
Order
Communication
Imagination
Exactness
Repetition
Perfection
Human beings need to be involved in meaningful activities. They need to feel a sense of
becoming. Humans need to belong. They
need to explore the world around them and
create an orientation for that exploration.
People have a need to create order and
make sense out of the chaos around them.
We need to communicate with others. We
20

use our imaginations. We work at exactness.
We learn using repetition. We yearn for perfection.
Montessori pedagogical principles use
and are based on the knowledge of the human tendencies.
Infant/Toddler
Infant/toddler refers to the age span from
birth to around age three. The infant/toddler
communities are divided into two areas –
the Nido, for ages two to fourteen months
and the Young Children’s Communities for
children ages fourteen to thirty-six months.
Not every Montessori school offers an infant/toddler program. Many infant/toddler
programs are self-contained and feed into
schools that have students ages three to six
years.
Inner Teacher
The child’s self-construction is aided by
what Montessorians call the inner teacher,
or the child’s unconscious urge to connect
to certain activities. The outward manifestations of the child’s inner teacher are the
child’s interest and attention. We encourage
interest through the prepared environment
and an enlightened awareness of our role in
the work of the child.
For example, we observe a child’s interest in music by observing his or her choice
of playing the bells in the Montessori classroom. The child’s inner teacher is urging the
child to learn to play songs.
A trained Montessori teacher in a prepared environment helps guide the child to
activities, thus aiding the child’s self-construction.
Lower Elementary
The elementary age group in many schools
is divided into two classes: the lower and
upper elementary. The lower elementary is
for those children who show psychological
characteristics of being in the second of the
four planes of development.
Ages given for each plane of development are approximate and are used as
guidelines to aid observation of the child’s
choices for work, in order to know when the
child is ready to enter a new learning environment. Montessori teachers are trained to
offer key lessons to direct and encourage
growth in the child’s observable areas of interest.
A child who is past his or her sixth birthday may, or may not, exhibit the psychological characteristics of the child in the second
plane of development. Until these characteristics are observed, the child is best served

by remaining in the primary environment of
the Casa.
Mneme
Mneme was the Greek Muse for memory. Dr.
Montessori used this psychological term to
express the idea of memory being created
and retained in the child by sensorial experiences. The idea of neuro-muscular memory
follows this concept.
Montessori Materials
Montessori materials were designed or incorporated into the work with the children by
Dr. Montessori, her son Mario and original
Montessori adherents.
Dr. Montessori used materials made by
Itard and Seguin, notably the Moveable
Alphabet and the Command Cards from Itard
and the Teens Board and Tens Board from
Seguin. Other materials are designed to reveal certain concepts to the child through
hands-on, uninterrupted exploration, after an
introductory lesson from the Montessori
teacher.
For example, the Pink Tower contains
multiple concepts, including height, volume
and sequence, squares of numbers and cubes
of numbers, among other abstractions.
There are dozens of pieces of Montessoridesigned materials that help the child in educating the senses of hearing, seeing, smelling,
touching, and tasting. Other Montessori materials aid the child in acquiring skills in math,
reading, writing, geography, social studies,
science, music, and more.
Montessori Teacher
A Montessori teacher has Montessori training
in the age level at which he or she is teaching. There is training for Assistants to Infancy
for working with children from birth to age
three; Primary training for working with children ages three to six; and Elementary training for working with ages six to twelve.
Adolescent training for working with twelveto eighteen-year-olds is now being developed. Most adolescent teachers have elementary training, with additional adolescent
training.
A Montessori teacher is trained to observe
children in a specific age group and
introduce them to developmentally challenging activities, based on those observations. A
Montessori elementary teacher, for example,
is trained to work with six- to twelve-year-olds
and may only have fundamental, versus specific, knowledge of the work with the
younger and older children. Primary teachers, likewise, have general knowledge of the
work of the elementary-aged child but may

not be trained to observe and give lessons to
the elementary-aged child.
Many Montessorians prefer to use the
term guide or director/directress instead
of teacher to describe their work with the
child. Dr. Montessori used the term guido
in her writings. The Montessori teacher’s
job is to help direct or guide the child to
purposeful activity. The Montessori guide
is focused on directing the successful learning and developmental progress of the
child, instead of being focused on teaching.
This fundamental view of how to interact
with the child is one of the major principles
of Montessori philosophy. The adult’s job is
to prepare an environment in order to guide
and direct the child to purposeful activity.
When I first became a Montessori certified teacher, I proudly introduced myself as
a Montessori guide at dinner parities, and
people asked me to lead float trips down the
Buffalo River. Even though the word guide
communicates more effectively to me about
what role the adult plays in a Montessori
classroom, I realize that most folks might
think guide means river rat.
The job of a Montessori guide is to help
children learn. As a college professor of
mine said, “I’m a Ph.D. in chemistry. My job
is to present information. Your job is to
learn it.” Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many
teachers over the years that see their job as
presenting information, with no concern if a
student actually learns that information. The
word guide to me connotes that you are
committed to helping someone reach a destination.
I would rather be guided than taught.
With a guide, I’ll end up where I want to be.
Most Montessori schools use the word
teacher, in a desire to communicate effectively with parents, whose experience has
primarily been with teachers.
Montessori teachers are guides, and that
is very good for your child.
Nido
Nido is nest in Italian, and the Nido is a
Montessori environment designed for the
infant between the ages of two to fourteen
months. When the child begins to walk, he
or she enters a new environment of the
Young Children’s Community.

The understanding of normalization doesn’t
require a leap of faith; it occurs in those moments when you feel most alive and more
you than any other time. When we do what
we love, and love doing it because we have
the skill and self-discipline to do the activity
well, those are the blissful moments of being
human. The activity we love might be anything – chopping wood, singing, dancing,
writing, conversing with others, cooking.
In a Montessori school, we are trying to
help the child attain a natural or normal developmental process, which is referred to as
normalization. This process of human development, or normalization, is evident in
an observable cycle of activities, call normalizing events.
Normalizing Events
In her book, The Secret of Childhood,
Montessori told us of her discovery that in
their natural state, children love to work,
which means to be involved in meaningful
and purposeful activity. When we are able to
give the child (or an adult, if only our bosses
understood!) a prepared environment and
uninterrupted time to work, the child experiences a normalizing event.
Children love to be busy, so we prepare
their environment with activities that foster
a love of work, concentration, self-discipline,
and a sense of joyful accomplishment.
There are three steps to a normalizing
event:

Normalization
The natural, or normal state, for a human
being is characterized by four attributes:
1. A love of work or activity
2. Concentration on an activity
3. Self-discipline
4. Sociability or joyful work.

1. Choose an activity.
2. Complete the activity and return the
materials to original order.
3. Sense of satisfaction.
Normalizing activities in a prepared environment, with an uninterrupted three-hour
work cycle, creates what Stephen Covey, in

his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People, calls a success cycle. To Montessorians, this process is normalization. When
was your last normalizing event? How did it
make you feel?
Parent Education
Parent education in Montessori terms is a series of ongoing lectures, discussions, and
demonstrations, designed for parents to
help bridge the child’s world of school and
home. Montessorians want to work with the
whole child – body, heart, mind and spirit –
and know that what happens at school affects home life, and what happens at home
affects school life.
Parent education strives to create important home/school and parent/teacher relationships in order to create an optimum environment for the whole child.
Pedagogical Principles
Pedagogy refers to more than just teaching.
Montessori pedagogical principles apply to
teaching, as well as learning. Montessori
teachers teach in order to promote learning,
to fire the child’s imagination and to feed
the child’s heart and spirit.
Each piece of material, with its corresponding lessons, has been developed to include the following teaching and learning
principles:
Use knowledge of human
tendencies
Awareness of psychological
characteristics
Prepared environment
Limitation of material
Teacher as link between child and the
environment
21

the foundation for later
work, with reading and math
materials for the four- and
five-year-old.
Prepared Environment

Freedom of choice and development
of responsibility
Auto-education or self-construction
Whole to the parts; concrete to
abstract

We live in a world of prepared environments. Stores,
theatres, and restaurants are
examples of places that have
been prepared to meet the
specific needs of the user.
A restaurant is prepared
to serve our need for food,
our need to socialize, etc.
Wait staff, chefs, wine stewards, are ready to serve us.
Tables and chairs are for our
comfort and aesthetic appeal. Pictures, flowers,
plants, and candles provide
decoration.
A good restaurant anticipates our needs. Wait staff offers us drinks and appetizers
to get us comfortable. Menu
selections are clearly given to
us. The restaurant is designed to serve our dining
needs, be it fast food or a
five-star experience.
The prepared environments in a Montessori school
are created to meet the developmental
needs of children, based on observable behaviors, in many ways, like a restaurant is
prepared to serve its customers.
There are four basic Montessori environments:

Isolation of difficulty
Repetition through variety
Indirect preparation
Techniques that lead to mental and
physical independence.
Practical Life
The prepared environment of the primary
classroom contains activities that help the
child learn dozens of practical self-care skills,
such as hand washing, dusting, sweeping,
clothes washing, and more. Children,
around the age of three years, are extremely
interested in these activities. Working with
the practical life exercises, children learn to
work independently in the classroom and
develop the concentration necessary to be
successful with later work that is more academic in nature. Practical life activities form
22

Primary Environment
The primary environment is the prepared
environment or classroom for children
ages three to six years. The environment
usually contains an outdoor component
as part of the classroom experience.
Psychological Characteristics
For the child from the age of six to twelve
years, we refer to the identifying features
of that time as psychological characteristics. The child now prefers to do activities
with friends, instead of working alone. To
learn, the elementary-age child needs repetition of concepts through a variety of
work. For the child in the second plane of
development, learning must use the
imagination, involve a sense of humor, involve going outside of the familiar school
and home, use logic and reason, and exercise the developing sense of right and
wrong.
Montessori teachers look for these
psychological characteristics in a six-yearold child to see if the child is ready to
move into an elementary environment.
Respect for the Child

The working of the hand and the mind
Observation of the child at work

Primary classes in a traditional setting
may refer to grades one to six, or grades
one to three, in many parts of the country. Montessorians see the years from
three to six being the time of a person’s
greatest learning and view this period as
the primary, or foundation, years of
schooling. To Montessorians, there is
nothing ‘pre-school’ about this time of
children’s learning. It is the real thing.

The infant/toddler environment from
birth to age three.
The primary environment for ages
three to six years.
The elementary environment for ages
six to twelve years.
The adolescent environments for ages
twelve to fifteen and fifteen to eighteen years.
Each Montessori environment is prepared
by Montessori-trained people who understand the developmental needs of that age
group.

Montessorians focus on the child’s needs
and the child’s work of creating a unique
person. We recognize that the child has a
formidable task. We work to be a help to
the life of the child, respecting both the
person that is not yet there and the one in
front of us.
Responsibility
The concept of freedom and responsibility is a key concept in working with children using Montessori’s philosophy.
Freedom follows responsibility.

Primary Community
Self-Construction
Children age three to six years and adults
(including parents) in the primary environment comprise the primary community. If a
school has multiple primary classrooms, the
term may refer to all the people involved in
that age group.

The Montessori idea is that the child constructs the adult he or she will become by
the self-selected activities that the child
engages in with concentration, self-discipline, and joyfulness.

This concept of self-construction is perhaps more readily seen with a child’s learning
to walk and talk. In normal circumstances, we
don’t have to teach a child how to walk or
talk. The child self-constructs as long as the
environment is conducive to that building of
the person. For example, if a child is confined
and not allowed movement, walking will not
develop. If a child doesn’t hear spoken language, speech will not appear.
In a Montessori classroom, we strive to
create a place where children have the freedom to enhance their abilities through selfselected activities. It occurs in much the same
way that they learned to walk and talk but at a
different level, involving reading and writing,
mathematics, music, science, geography, and
practical living activities.
Sensitive Periods
Before the age of six, human beings are in a
unique period of learning and development.
At this time in our lives, certain information is
absorbed by our personalities without conscious effort. Young children learn to walk,
talk and do hundreds of things without formal instruction or being aware of learning.
Montessori described these stages as sensitive periods of development, using a term
from biologists.
Sensitive periods are characterized by the
following five observable behaviors.
Children seem to be drawn to certain
work and we see the following:

in his or her developing powers of vision,
hearing, touch, taste, and smell.
The sensorial materials engage the hand
and the mind to create powerful learning
experiences for your child. These experiences become indirect preparation for later
academic and artistic skills, and create
‘touchstones’ in the mind for skills such as
perfect pitch, color memory, figure memory, and other nonverbal accomplishments.
Visual discrimination of length, width,
height, and color are addressed through the
work with the Pink Tower, Brown Stair, Red
Rods, Color Tablets, Cylinder Blocks and
Knobless Cylinders.
The Geometric Cabinet, Geometric
Solids, Constructive Triangles, Binomial and
Trinomial Cubes help the child learn different shapes.
Touch is fine tuned with Rough and
Smooth Boards, Fabric Boxes, Mystery Bag,
Thermic Bottles, Thermic Tablets, Baric
Tablets, and Pressure Cylinders.
Hearing is refined in the work with the
Sound Cylinders and the Bell Material,
along with teacher-initiated sound games.
Tasting activities and the smelling bottles
help your child distinguish a variety of tastes
and aromas.
Each material is designed to help your
child’s mind focus on a quality, such as color, and distinguish objects by their attributes, which may include color, size, shape,
weight, sound, smell, taste, temperature, or
other qualities.

A well-defined activity with a beginning, middle, and end.

Structure

The activity is irresistible for the child,
once he or she starts it.

Some parents complain that Montessori
classrooms are too structured. Others say
there is not enough structure.
Traditional preschools are structured
around the group changing activities every
fifteen or twenty minutes. Snack and recess
occur at predictable times each day. For
many parents, children being told what to
do and being constantly scheduled and entertained by teachers is construed as structure. These parents, therefore, may see a
Montessori classroom as not having enough
structure.
The structure of a Montessori classroom
is built on allowing the children free-choice
activities in a prepared environment, within
an uninterrupted three-hour work cycle.
Individual work is not interrupted by snack
time, song time, or circle time. The child
creates an inner structure by having ‘normalizing events’ based on personal interests.
The child entering a Montessori classroom from a traditionally structured preschool may feel anxious, if not told by the
teacher what to do every fifteen minutes. It

The same activity is returned to again
and again.
A passionate interest develops.
A restful and tranquil state comes at
the finish of the activity.
Once the sensitive period is over, children
are not drawn to certain activities as before.
Three-year olds love to wash their hands, because they are in a sensitive period for that
activity; whereas, ten-year-olds are not.
There are five sensitive periods of development from birth to age six: Language,
Order, Refinement of the Senses, Movement. and Social Relations.
In the older child, these unique learning
periods are called psychological characteristics.
Sensorial Materials
Montessori sensorial materials are self-correcting, hands-on materials that aid your child

usually takes six to eight weeks for most children to begin to build the inner structure
that will give them confidence in the
Montessori classroom. During this period,
parents may, again, feel that a Montessori
classroom is not structured enough.
Another parent of a newcomer may
think there is too much structure in the
classroom, when children are asked to use
the materials in specific ways. As long as the
materials are not being abused or used in a
dangerous manner, the children are free to
explore the materials after they have had an
introductory lesson.
To the parent of a child, who is accustomed to playing with everything at home,
without having to consider the effects on
other people and surroundings, the
Montessori classroom may appear too structured.
An ‘invisible’ structure provided by the
process of normalization allows your child
to create an internal organization. This selfconstruction will aid the development of
self-discipline that will last a lifetime.
Three-Hour Work Cycle
When given a regular three-hour period,
children (and adults) learn to tap into a success cycle. After accomplishing a series of
short and familiar tasks in a 90-minute time
frame, a child will often choose a task that is
challenging and represents ‘true learning.’
At this 90-minute mark, there is a period of
restlessness that lasts about 10 minutes, until the choice for the challenging activity is
made. The new activity may last for sixty to
ninety minutes.
At the end of a work cycle, it is not unusual to see a child in quiet satisfaction, smiling both outwardly and inwardly.
Toddler
Toddler refers to the children who have begun to walk and are in the Young Children’s
Communities for children ages fourteen to
thirty-six months.
Upper Elementary
The upper elementary is for children about
ages nine to twelve years of age. See elementary environment.
Whole Child
In the process of aiding development,
Montessorians focus on the growth of the
whole child, not just academics. The paradox of focusing on the development of the
whole child, through the process of normalization, is that academic interest and skills
23

bloom, as the child develops a habit of
learn-commit-do, or a success cycle.
As Montessorians and adults, our challenge is to lead the whole person – body,
mind, heart, and spirit. Our challenge is
that we must model the self-discipline, the
vision, the passion and the conscience that
is at the heart of true learning and self-discovery for our children.
As Montessorians and adults, we walk
with our children on a path of trust, helping them to understand how to live their
lives, how to develop their talents, how to
share their love, and how to do what’s
right. Corrections on our path should
strive to be of loving intention to serve the
needs of the whole child.
Work Cycle
The development of a work cycle is an important component in the idea of normalization for the child. In our Montessori
schools, every day we should try to protect
a three-hour work period from interruption.
A basic work cycle involves choosing an
activity, doing that activity, returning the
activity to order, and then experiencing a
sense of satisfaction. That defines one unit
or cycle of work.
This sense of satisfaction, which may
last a few seconds to a few minutes, helps
motivate the child (and adult) to choose
the next activity, thus creating another cycle of work.
As the child matures, his or her work
cycle will grow until the child is able to
maintain a three-hour level of activity. True
learning occurs during the last 90 minutes
of the three-hour work cycle, when a child,
after experiencing satisfaction with previous work, will choose a new and challenging activity to master.
This all begins with the child choosing,
doing, returning to order, feeling satisfaction, then choosing again. Each activity
contributes to an upward spiral of successful learning within the child.
Five-year-olds in a Montessori classroom usually begin to establish a second
three-hour work cycle in the afternoon.
Summary
We hope this vocabulary guide will help
you feel comfortable with the Montessori
lingo in your child’s school. Also, if there is
some idea or concept you don’t understand, please contact your child’s teacher
or school administrator. They are in a sensitive period for helping parents.
❦❦❦
24

efore children enter a Montessori
classroom on the first day of school
each year, Montessori teachers
have spent many hours preparing
the environment. Materials that
were carefully stored in boxes during vacation time are brought out
and unwrapped. Wooden shelves
that were stacked in the far corner
of the room to allow for a thorough
cleaning of the carpet are pulled
into position. Plants and classroom
pets that spent their vacation at the
teacher’s home are brought in
from the car.
A similar scene is repeated in
Montessori schools around the

The different faces of Montessori’s prepared environment. Left: A 3-6 Early Childhood Classroom;
Above: the Elementary classroom; and Below: an
Upper Elementary classroom at work.
Photographed at three different schools for three different ages, these classrooms share commonalities.
They are bright, airy, and peaceful environments,
filled with exciting ‘work’ for Montessori children.

world. Slowly, the transformation occurs, and when it is complete, each classroom will have
its own unique vibration, reflecting the energy and interests of
the teachers. There is, however,
an underlying secret: all
Montessori classrooms are prepared according to a very specific master plan. The placement of
materials is not random; the use
of light and arrangement of seating areas is deliberate. It is a master plan that is one hundred
years old, seen through new
eyes at the beginning of each
school year.

In Part One of “The Guided
Tour,” we will focus primarily
on the prepared Practical Life
and Sensorial environments
of the Early Childhood classroom, because this is where it
all begins, and because the
materials and activities are so
plentiful and exciting to
young children ... and a source
of mystery to most parents.
In Part Two, we will see how
Montessori students move

from the concrete (the Early
Childhood classroom) to the
abstract (the Elementary classroom) in the areas of
Language, Math, and Science.
25

There are three key ideas that are central to the
mission as a Montessori school:

A Philosophy
Of Curriculum
Guide
The following Guide was prepared by
Tim Seldin, President of The Montessori
Foundation during his years as
Headmaster of The Barrie School in
Silver Spring, Maryland.

Montessori schools are designed to prepare children both for university and for
life.

■

It is not the adult who shapes the child; it
is the child who, through his experiences,
creates an adult human being.

■

Teaching is not something that one can do
to another, we can only facilitate the natural process of learning.

■

There is a clear connection between one’s
sense of self, of being fully alive and open
to new ideas and experience, and ability to
learn.

Recognizing this, we are engaged in a process
of facilitating the development of self-actualized
renaissance men and women. Such people are
‘teacher-proof.’ They have learned how to learn
and see school as a center of an enjoyable, life-

long experience. Children with values
such as these will normally go on to
college, perhaps after first taking a year
off for work or travel, as the natural extension of their previous education.
There is a great debate over the appropriate balance between Montessori’s objective of cultivating the child’s
spontaneous interest in learning, and
the expectations of parents and society.
Normally, a school is perceived as
the transmitter of culture from one
generation to the next ,through a formal curriculum. This is certainly an important part of the mission. However,
as a Montessori school, we are equally committed to the development of
responsible members of the human
family and the protection of the child’s
fragile spark of curiosity and creativity.

The spiral of the
Montessori
c u rriculum has no end,,
and the depth to which
any topic can be pursued
is limited only by a
student’s interests
and ability.
Most children know far more
about the world before they start
school than they will show a few years
later, when they have learned to be
passive learners, who don’t trust their
senses, intellect, and imagination.
Therefore, our greatest task is to help
our students to rediscover their brain’s
ability to think, intuit, discover; and to
develop a sense of independence, sequence, and order—to learn how to
learn.
At the same time, as an independent school, parents come to us and
pay a great deal of money in tuition for
services available from the public
schools, for which they have already
paid through their taxes.
They come to us seeking quality
programs and services! Their highest
priorities are:
1. academic excellence
2. character development
26

Clearly, they expect their children to be well
prepared for college, but, beyond this, they
are looking for a school experience that will
offer something special. They want a school
experience that is intellectually exciting and
that will develop a wide-range of talents and
interests.
The delivery of these services is difficult to
document from the school’s end, and, from
the parent’s end, even more difficult to evaluate. Thus, parents expect to be kept abreast
of the programs that address these goals and
their children’s progress in each program. As
a result, we work carefully to maintain this delicate balance.

al world and the human experience that interconnects the traditionally separate subject
disciplines. Units of study cut across the curriculum, weaving together, as one example,
the land, flora and fauna, folk tales, art, dance,
poetry, architecture, history, everyday life, and
cooking of a country under study.
The curriculum has no outer limits except
for humanity’s knowledge and imagination.
At the same time, our core curriculum has
been carefully structured to establish benchmarks for achievement by most students by
the end of each level.
At its finest, Montessori is an incredibly elaborate model of education. We don’t advocate

using all these tricks and devices simply to
make the school day pass more pleasantly or
to prepare students for their standardized tests
at the end of the year. The real aim of education, as we see it, is to prepare children to
live lives filled with personal satisfaction, as responsible, concerned citizens of the Earth. An
important element in achieving that goal is the
development of knowledge and understanding about the world: civilization. However,
along with this must come self knowledge, selfrespect, compassion, and a mind and heart
open to new ideas and information. Our goal
is to help children to learn how to learn.
❦❦❦

T he
M at e r i a l s
Are Not the
‘ Me t h o d ’

ost newcomers to Montessori are awestruck
at the array of colorful materials, purposefully arranged throughout the classroom. It is
an amazing sight for adults and children. The
materials almost call out to be picked-up,
handled, and treated with respect.
The materials, however, are not the
‘Method.’ The ‘M’ in Method is capitalized, at
least in my mind, for a reason.
Think of Montessori as a five-star restaurant, recognized for the best cuisine for miles
around. You make a reservation, and the day
arrives when you are finally seated at a beautiful table: linen tablecloth and napkins,
fresh-cut flowers, exquisite water goblets,
and silverware that is just the right weight to
rest comfortably in your hand.There is soft
music playing in the background, the lighting is just right. The restaurant is warm and

The curriculum can be thought of as having
two aspects:
1. The school’s basic expectations for what will
be first introduced, worked on, or reviewed
and targeted for mastery by 85 percent to
90 percent of all students at each age/grade
level.
2. The lessons that arise out of the children’s
natural curiosity. While we follow a planned
syllabus, to give us cohesion and structure,
we should never be satisfied with a year
spent giving students set lessons from a prescribed syllabus. By providing children with
all sorts of books, pictures, specimens, and
artifacts, we can almost guarantee that we
will encourage their curiosity and expand
their scope of learning. By this, we mean to
suggest that, instead of moving through the
set curriculum more quickly, we allow children to explore additional related topics that
capture their interest.
Montessori curriculum is designed to intrigue
children and develop a lifelong love of learning. No topic is presented just once and forgotten; lessons are introduced quite concretely
in the early years and are reintroduced later at
increasing degrees of complexity and abstraction. Students gain experience and develop
skills at one level of understanding, which prepares them for more complex lessons at the
next level.
The spiral of the Montessori curriculum
has no end, and the depth to which any topic can be pursued is limited only by a student’s
interests and ability. At the same time, our expectations are quite high; challenging each
student to his/her fullest individual potential,
establishing a clear standard of achievement
and quality of thought and work. We encourage accelerated students to expand their studies horizontally, researching topics at greater
depth and a more sophisticated level of
thought and analysis.
Our course of study is consciously multidisciplinary. It is an examination of the natur-

Editor’s Note: This introductory section has been
written by me: a Montessori mom, and long-time
editor of Tomorrow’s Child ... but not a trained
Montessorian. These are my observations, based
on how I have come to understand the role of the
Montessori materials over the years.
– Joyce St. Giermaine

inviting, the waitstaff is calm and respectful
and happy to attend to your every need. In the
food-service industry, we would call this ‘ambience.’ In Montessori, we would call it a ‘prepared environment.’
When the food is served, it is everything
you expected and more. You leave the restaurant feeling satisfied and happy; you made a
good choice.
For a minute, let’s consider how you
would feel if the food were not particularly
good. No amount of ambience will make up
for a mediocre meal, especially if you are paying top dollar for it. Now, let’s consider how
you would feel about receiving the same great
meal at a small restaurant, with plastic cutlery,
rock music blaring in the background, and a
predominantly take-out clientele. It would certainly be a different experience, and you might
actually be in the mood for something loud
and fun, but maybe not every day or for a special occasion. You might be willing to overlook
the lack of ambience if the food is good. If the
food isn’t good, you probably won’t return.
Not all Montessori schools can be compared to an expensive five-star restaurant, nor
should they. Montessori education takes place
in the most prestigious locales throughout the
world; it is also found in migrant-worker
camps and impoverished countries, where
parents and teachers make their own materials from whatever is available to them in their
region.
Montessori materials are ‘tools’ that Dr.
Montessori developed to complement and expand the principles of her Method. Although
there is something called a ‘control of error’
incorporated into the design of each material,
the materials, themselves, are not a substitute
for the lessons they represent. Going back to
our restaurant analogy: ambiance, excellent
food, and great service need to go together to
produce a quality product.
Montessori materials are deceptively ‘simple’ in appearance, but they are surprisingly
complex in design and purpose. Think of the
puzzle boxes you may have had as a child.
There were star-shaped holes, round holes,
and square holes, along with correspondingly
shaped pegs. Most of us quickly concluded
that the square pegs just didn’t work in the
round holes. Some of us took a bit longer, and
even if we continued to disagree on a philosophical level that round and square should
be interchangeable, we eventually realized
that it was a waste of time to continue to try to
force something to fit, where it clearly didn’t
belong. That’s control of error.
But what else did it teach us? Did we learn
that the shapes were geometric figures? Did
we learn the names of each shape? Did we discover on our own that one shape weighed
more or less than the other? Could we close
our eyes and recognize each shape by touch
28

alone? Could we use our finger to draw the shape
in sand? Could we sound out the letter ‘s’ in star?
What else is round? A plate, the earth, a goldfish
bowl? And so on. The possibilities are endless.
That is the Method.
Take a look at the Knobbed Cylinders on page
42. Notice the concentration and excitement on
the little boy’s face. To the casual observer, she is
having fun with a puzzle. To a Montessori teacher,
he is learning to understand the concepts of
length, circumference, weight, and depth. And
he’s enjoying the satisfaction of his ‘work.’
At The Montessori Foundation, we get many
phone calls from well-intentioned parents and
‘traditional’ educators, who want to incorporate
Montessori into their school or home environment. Often, they just want to know where they
can obtain Montessori materials. This comes from
the erroneous belief that it is the materials that define the methodology. Despite the elegant simplicity of the materials, there is more than one hundred years of pedagogy and implementation behind their design, and Montessori teachers are
specifically trained to incorporate each material
into the bigger picture of what we call the
Montessori Method.
At this point, our phone callers usually ask to
buy the Montessori ‘manual’ to explain how to use
the materials. They become frustrated and disappointed that such a book is not available, probably
thinking that it’s a big secret that we are keeping
to ourselves to the exclusion of the rest of the
world. Not so. A good Montessori teacher, we explain, spends years of classroom study, along with
classroom internship, working with children under the guidance of master Montessori teachers,
to become qualified to provide lessons incorporating the Montessori materials.
On page 32, look for an article by Robin Howe
on table washing in the Practical Life section.
Here’s an example of ‘materials’ that everyone has
in their home. It looks like a simple exercise, but,
as you will see, it is not just about playing in water.
It teaches responsibility for the environment, develops fine- and gross-motor skills, and creates an
orderly sequence of steps, enhancing the child’s
ability to focus and remain on task.
As you read through the descriptions of the
materials in this issue, please remember that every
exercise and material has a specific purpose, usually involving many steps, along with a built-in control of error. It is the coming together of methodology and materials that is behind the genius of
the Montessori Method. Although the teachers are
never intended to be the focal point in a
Montessori classroom, it is the teachers, with their
knowledge of the intended learning objectives of
each lesson, the proper use of the corresponding
materials, and their ability to “follow the child,”
who are committed to providing the environment
and guidance to implement the methodology that
allows children to learn new skills, incorporate
new information, and maximize their years in
Montessori.

eveloping new skills that will enable
us to live full and productive lives is
something that all of us encounter
throughout the years. It’s not just a
process for the very young.
Think about the last time you started a
new job, took up a new hobby, moved to
a new city, upgraded your computer’s
software, or faced the need to re-learn old
skills, as you recovered from an injury or
illness. Life is familiar in the sense that you
see others around you functioning, but
you are not quite up to speed. You are not
yet competent with the new set of circumstances, but you very much want to be!
Competence, independence, willingness to embrace the challenges of change
are, quite possibly, the most important
building blocks of the Montessori Method.
These skills will enable children to thrive –
and not just survive – in their lives. We can
help our children learn to read, do math,
and understand science, but how can we
prepare them for the changes, life experiences, and new technology they will face throughout their lifetime, when we can’t even begin
to imagine what the future will hold?
And so, in Montessori, we provide opportunities to help our children learn these skills at
the most basic level: Practical Life.

nce is to be able to do

– Maria Montessori

Knots Happen
Shoelaces learn to be tied; however, knots do happen. Liquids get spilled during pouring.
Spooning exercises might run amok at the beginning with beans or marbles strewn on the
floor. But that’s OK in a Montessori classroom. It’s not failure; it’s an opportunity to practice
and refine skills, while taking responsibility for restoring order and caring for the classroom
environment.

Montessori provides a
safe environment to experiment and learn without
fear of embarrassment or
reprimand. The ‘oops factor’ is an expected, and necessary, part of the process.
As adults, we know how
tempting it is to play it safe
and only do what we know
how to do well. It takes
courage and self-confidence
to risk the awkwardness of
trying something new:
whether it’s pouring water
from a child-sized pitcher or
learning to play tennis as an
adult.
One outcome of
Montessori education for
children, who are now
adults, is their ongoing willingness to adapt to change,
while pursuing new ideas
and new ventures. They understand that it is not always
possible to be the best at
everything when they first
begin, but, when they are
able to measure their efforts
against their own sense of
self, instead of looking for
validation from others,
there is a greater internal
satisfaction and joy in their
progress and accomplishment.

The Three Rules of W o r k
1.

Out of clutter, find simplicity.

2.

From discord, find harmony.

3.

In the middle of difficulty lies
opportunity.
— Attributed to Albert Einstein

30

Independence does not come
automatically as we grow older; it is learned. Sweeping and
cleaning help children develop
eye-hand coordination and
motor skills. Special child-sized
tools are important factors to
make success possible. Imagine
trying to learn to bowl with a
bowling ball that is too heavy.
It’s the same for children. The
Montessori curriculum and
prepared environment encourages success and the selfconfidence that follows. With
the development of skills, children increasingly become responsible for their environment, which is why Dr.
Montessori called it a children’s
‘house’ or ‘community.’ It is this
combination of skills and responsibility that characterizes
Montessori children throughout their time in Montessori
and throughout life.

Spooning E

The spooning exercises require not only motor
skills, but concentration, on the part of young children. A variety of spooning materials are used.

ng Exercises
Children love the challenge of using
a spoon to transfer materials from
one container to another. Take a
closer look at the containers in the
photos and the manner in which the
exercises are presented. There is an
elegance to even the simplest
Montessori exercises. Containers are
selected for form as well as function.

Pouring

The water exercises might very well become your child’s favorite ‘work.’ Using
child-sized pitchers and containers, children master precision as they transfer
liquids from one container to another. Notice the little trays that define (and confine) the critical components of the exercise, including a little sponge for cleanup.
This is clearly an exercise that your children will love to demonstrate at home.
Add sieves and turkey basters to expand the exercise. A little food coloring added
to the water enhances the experience.
Editor’s Note: Be on the look-out for spontaneous opportunities for your
children to demonstrate their newly developed pouring skills, opportunities
that may not have the built-in success rate they experience in their Montessori
classroom. For example: When you are in a restaurant that provides your table
with an adult-sized pitcher of water, along with empty glasses, you may want to
pay extra attention, and possibly make adjustments, to your dining environment
– sooner rather than later.
In law, we’d call this situation an ‘attractive nuisance.’ In weather jargon,
it would be ‘the perfect storm.’
I remember all too well looking away
from my Montessori child for a
nanosecond, which was all it took for
him to grab the pitcher with both
hands. I turned back just in time to
see an entire pitcher of ice water,
along with the plastic glass that was
its intended destination, land in my
lap. I don’t remember screaming or
reprimanding (at least I hope I
didn’t). Anyway, a word to the wise:
Montessori children love to demonstrate their work!

Why do
Montessori
students
spend so
much time
washing
tables?
Step 1: Invitation to a Lesson

Anatomy of a Lesson
Step 2: Apron

Step 4:
Preparing
Materials

32

Step 3:
Collecting
Materials
for Lesson

Step 5: Getting Water

ronically, I missed the session of my
Montessori teacher training when
we were given the lesson on how to
wash tables. I remember doing it as a
Montessori child. How hard could it be? I
was just getting out of my first career in
the restaurant business, and someone
was going to teach me how to wash a
table? I had washed and set tables for
the rich and famous. I had cleaned more
tables than everyone in that class combined. I was, in fact, relieved to miss this
day. The summer training session ended,
with my teacher-trainer reminding me
that I still needed to have a lesson on
table washing.
A month later, about three weeks
into the school year at Island Village
Montessori School in Venice, FL, where
I was doing my internship, my head
teacher, Ms. Wilfriede, a wonderful, experienced Montessorian, invited me to
join her while she gave a review lesson to
one of the returning students on table
washing. Great, I thought! This was my
opportunity to receive the lesson, seemingly without missing a beat. About twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting

there observing a four-year-old finish up his
work, while I, the ‘non-lesson-needing expert,’
watched dumfounded.
I once thought that table washing was one of
the most remedial tasks that a Montessori student would ever have to learn. As a result of
watching this lesson, and essentially being humbled by a four-year -old (also an experience that
has since occurred on many occasions), I have
come to realize how important and difficult this
work is.
I have now learned how to give this lesson,
and it never ceases to amaze me that it is so
complicated. More amazing is the way that my
students seem to pick it up so quickly and how I
still, after many lessons, have to focus in order
to perform it correctly. For these reasons, I
would like to share the lesson, as well as some
observations, on how children respond to this
exercise. It is my hope that others will gain a
better appreciation for the complexity of this
lesson and will, as a result, appreciate its importance and contribution as a part of the
Montessori curriculum.
When working with any water exercise, the
first step is to have the child put on an apron.
Students are already familiar with where aprons
are kept in the classroom, as well as how to put
one on. Next, the teacher asks the student to accompany him or her to where the table-washing
kit is located on the shelf. The child is either
shown or asked to identify the table-washing kit
and is then asked to take it to the side of the
table that will be washed, placing the kit on the
floor next to the table. Included in the table
washing kit are the soap in the soap dish, a soap
brush, a pitcher for gathering the water, a drying cloth, and a hand towel that will serve as a
mat for the materials. Generally, the materials
are kept in the basin that will be used for the
water. With the hand towel in place on the
floor, the materials are arranged along the top
of the hand towel in the order of: soap, brush,
and drying towel from left to right, with the water pitcher and the basin along the bottom.
(This lesson may vary slightly depending on the
classroom and the teacher.)
After all the materials are placed on the towel, water is brought to the table using the water
pitcher. Children have to fetch the water, which
exercises body control as they navigate through
the classroom, returning carefully with a pitcher
filled with water (about two-thirds full). Then
the water is poured from the pitcher to the
basin. The pouring of water from a pitcher is an
extension of work that the student has already
mastered in earlier Practical Life lessons. Next,
the sponge is wet and pressure is applied to release excess water. Again, both the wetting of
the sponge, as well and the squeezing of the
sponge are skills that children already possess,
as a result of previous lessons in Practical Life.
Using the damp sponge, from left to right, top
to bottom, the table is wet. The sponge is then

returned to the mat at the top left corner of
the towel.
Next, the child wets the brush in the water of the basin and gently shakes off excess
water. With soap in left hand and brush in
right hand, the student lightly soaps the
brush and then returns the soap to the soap
dish along the top of the mat. Starting at the
top left of the table, moving in a circular motion, from left to right, he applies soap to the
table. After the first horizontal row is complete, the brush is rinsed and the soaping
process is repeated, until the table is sufficiently soaped. There should be small, but
visible, suds on the surface of the table. After
rinsing the brush and shaking off excess water, the brush is returned to the towel,
which serves as a mat, absorbing any excess
water.
The sponge is wet once again. As an extension of this Practical Life exercise, the student might be asked to count how many
compresses the sponge gets and then count
the number of squeezes in order to expel
excess water. Wiping from top to bottom,
starting from the left to right, the child
makes three rows down, focusing on the
suds that have gathered on the bottom of
the sponge. The child rinses the sponge after each set of three vertical rows and continues until the table is free of soap suds.
After the surface is completely clear, the
child checks the edge for suds and wipes it
accordingly.
The table is now clean, and the smaller
towel is used to dry the table. The movement, from left to right, with small circular
motions, is repeated, using the towel, until
table is dry. The towel is folded and replaced to the right of the brush along the
top of the mat. At this point, the table is
clean, and the basin is filled with soapy water. The student then takes the basin and
disposes of the soapy water. The process of
disposing of the water is also a very important part of the lesson. The child, again, has
to navigate through the classroom, focusing
on his movement and the balance of the
basin as to not spill the water. This is great
practice for walking slowly and being patient.
In this classroom, the child uses a bucket
to dump the water. Once the water is
dumped, the basin is returned to the bottom of the mat. Then, using the pitcher,
more water is brought and poured into the
basin. Using his fingertips, the child sloshes
the water around releasing soap scum from
edges of the basin. Again, the basin is emptied into the bucket and then returned to
mat. Using the small drying towel, the basin
is dried. With the towel in hand, the soap
dish, pitcher and, if necessary, the brush
dish are dried and then put back into the
basin, which is already dry. The wet towel is
hung to dry on the drying rack or laundry

line, and the table-washing kit is returned to
its original place on the Practical Life shelf.
Remembering each step is daunting for
an adult, which is why I find it amazing that
children are so quickly able to learn this
work, often after only one lesson.
This lesson is important for many reasons. As mentioned during the lesson description, the child has to practice patience,
while exercising fine-motor skills, as well as
balance. Furthermore, his ability to sequence is challenged, as the proper completion of the work is dependent upon his ability to follow the proper steps. Another important aspect of this lesson, perhaps overlooked much of the time, is the time that
the student spends working with the
teacher. This is one of the longest lessons
and can often take up to fifteen minutes.
During this process, children must listen
carefully and ask questions, which helps
them develop important language skills.
I hope that my description of this exercise offers some insight into the Montessori
classroom and instills a sense of respect and
feeling of awe for the children. Similar to
the mistake I made, many people may assume that these lessons with simple names
must, indeed, be simple, causing us to wonder how they could be so important. Indeed, I have come to realize that they are
important, not only as a part of children’s
Montessori academic curriculum but also
their development as people.

Daniel Robinson (Robin) Howe, III was a Montessori
student from age two through the eighth grade. He
has a BA from Dickinson College, an MA f rom USF
and is pursuing his Montessori training through
the International Montessori Council (IMC) and the
Palm Harbor Teacher Education Center (Palm
Harbor, FL).
Many thanks to Brennan in Ms. Wilfriede’s class
at Island Village Montessori School in Venice, FL.

Caring for Their Environment
Montessori children learn to treat their classrooms as their ‘home away from home.’ They
take pride in caring for the cleaning and beautifying of their environment. It is not happenstance
that Dr. Montessori referred to the Montessori classroom as a casa – Italian for ‘home.’ The
little girl above is arranging flowers to be placed in vases distributed throughout the classroom.

Independence comes from learning to
control their bodies and to care for
themselves & others
Children work with several different Dressing Frames, each
of which teaches a specific
skill: buttoning, tying, snapping, zipping.
Why then, do Montessori
teachers ask parents to send
their young children to school
in comfortable, easy-to-manage clothing, such as pull-on
pants and T-shirts?
Before they have mastered
the skills to button, zip, and tie,
they need to be independent—successful in caring for
themselves, especially when it
comes to visiting the bathroom. It won’t take long before they can do everything
the big kids can do.
Soon, they will stop you
when it comes time to put on
their coats, eager to show you
how they do it in class. It’s a
sight to behold!

In Montessori, children learn to listen to their bodies. When they are hungry, they prepare a
snack, cleaning up after themselves when they are finished. You will often see young students
cutting fresh fruit for themselves and their friends.

Left: Walking the line, heel to toe, helps children develop balance and control of their bodies,
allowing them to move carefully and gracefully around the room. Once they have developed
basic line-walking skills, children are then challenged to carry items that should not be dropped,
such as Montessori materials, small flags, or a tray of cups.
36

Safety first: Notice the goggles and how the
child has been taught to keep his non-hammering hand out of the way. Plus, the nails
have already been started!

Using an old-fashioned washboard
and the classroom sink, children
wash the cotton napkins they have
used at lunch, place them on a drying rack, and then iron them with a
small, child-sized, low- temperature
iron. The napkins are then folded
and ready for the next day.

Montessori children are provided opportunities to sew, crochet, string beads and do needlepoint. Not only are
they learning a Practical Life skill, they are also developing their fine-motor dexterity.

earning how to work and play together
with others, in a peaceful and caring
community, is perhaps the most critical
life skill that Montessori teaches. Learning how to greet someone graciously is
one of the first acts of courtesy learned
in the Montessori classroom.
Everyday kindness and courtesy are
vital Practical Life skills. Lessons in Grace
and Courtesy teach everyday
social customs, such as how to enter a
room, not to disturb another’s work,
how to ask if you may join in an activity,
how to decline an invitation graciously,
table manners, and how to offer an apology.
Even the youngest child is treated
by her teachers and classmates with dignity and respect, and the everyday example of the older children behaving graciously reinforces the lessons in kindness.
Montessori students come to understand and accept that we all have responsibilities to other people. They learn how
to handle new situations that they will
face as they become increasingly independent. They develop a clear sense of
values and social conscience and absorb
everyday ethics and interpersonal skills
from the earliest years.
The Silence Game helps children
develop a much higher level of self-discipline, along with a greater awareness
of the sounds around us that most people take for granted. In this group activity, the teacher will get the children’s attention, either by ringing a small bell or
by hanging up a sign with the command
Silence. The children stop where they
are or gather on the line, close their eyes,
and try to remain perfectly still. The children sit still, with their eyes shut, and
wait to hear the teacher whisper their
name. When they hear it ever so softly
spoken, they silently rise and join the
teacher.
Sometimes the teachers will vary the
Silence Game by challenging the children to carry bells across the room without allowing them to ring, or they may

38

Lessons in Grace,
Courtesy &
Community Service
use the calm atmosphere to introduce the children to guided visualization. At first, the younger
children may not be able to hold
the silence for more than twenty
or thirty seconds, but gradually
their ability to relax, listen, and appreciate the perfectly calm environment increases. In many classes, the Silence Game is an important daily ritual. Montessori
schools are almost always closeknit communities of people, living and learning together in an atmosphere of warmth, safety, kindness, and mutual respect.
Teachers become mentors and
friends. Students learn to value the
different backgrounds and interests of their classmates.

could have joined us either. So, you see, it’s just
one of those things. I want to remain your
friend.”
With that, Lisa is finished and withdraws
her hands. Now it is Eleanor’s turn to agree
or disagree. In any case, they continue the dialogue until they reach some kind of agreement, even if that means that they disagree. At
least they are talking, without yelling, screaming, and blaming. They want to solve the problem. When they have reached an agreement,
they ring the bell to let the others know. In case
they cannot come to a positive conclusion, they
may ask for a mediator. This may be one of the
older children, who has been trained to be impartial and to listen well.
However, if the problem or conflict is too
involved, then one of them may ask for a poww o w. During a pow-wow, the entire class, or
a large part of the class, sits in a circle, listens
to first one, then the other person’s side of the
story. The class members contribute what they
can, either as facts of what they have seen or
heard, as ethics (right and wrong), or in perspective to class rules, upon which all have
agreed previously. It is wise for the teacher to
observe and monitor the entire process from
the sidelines.
The core experience the students gain from
these procedures is that it is necessary to solve
disturbances honestly and with good will to
maintain a harmonious and cooperative atmosphere in the community.

Community
service is an
important
element in
Elementary and
Secondary
Montessori
programs. Even
very young children can learn
to share with
friends and help
their classroom
community.

Community
Service
39

A

child interacts with the physical world through her senses.
From birth, she will look, listen, touch, taste, pick up, manipulate, and smell almost anything that comes into her grasp. At
first, everything goes into the mouth. Gradually, she begins to
explore each object’s weight, texture, and temperature. She
may watch something that catches her attention, such as a
butterfly, with infinite patience. The Sensorial curriculum is
designed to help children focus their attention more carefully
on the physical world, exploring with each of their senses the
subtle variations in the properties of objects.
At first, children may simply be asked to sort among a prepared series of objects that vary by only one aspect, such as
height, length, or width. Other exercises challenge them to
find identical pairs or focus on very different physical properties, such as aroma, taste, weight, shades of color, temperature, or sound. These exercises are essentially puzzles, and
they tend to fascinate children, because they are just difficult
enough to represent a meaningful challenge. Each has a
built-in control of error that allows children who are observant to check their own work.
The Sensorial exercises include lessons in vocabulary, as
the children master the names of everything from sophisticated plane and solid geometric figures to the parts of familiar
plants and animals. As the Inuit people of the Arctic demonstrate to us with their many different words for snow, we observe that as the children learn the correct names for things,
the objects themselves take on meaning and reality as the
children learn to recognize and name them.
Why is it so important to educate the young child’s senses?
We certainly don’t believe that we can improve a child’s hearing or sight through training. However, we can help children
to pay attention, to focus their awareness, and to learn how to
observe and consider what comes into their experience. In a
way, the Sensorial curriculum accomplishes something like a
course in wine tasting or music appreciation; one learns to
taste, smell, or hear what is experienced with a much deeper
awareness and appreciation. These exercises can help children understand and appreciate their world more fully.
The Montessori Bells (left) extend the child’s ability to distinguish sounds into the area of musical pitch.
They are a lovely set of bells fixed to little wooden bases.
Each bell is tuned to either a whole or a half note on the
standard musical scale. The entire set comprises one entire octave, including sharps and flats. The set includes
one set of bells with tan bases for both half and whole notes,
and a second set in which the bases of the bells that sound
the whole notes are painted white, and those for the sharps
and flats are painted black.
At first the children learn how to strike the bells with a
small mallet to produce a clear note and dampen them
with a little felt covered rod. Then the teacher will set out
two or three pairs of bells from the two sets. The children match the pairs that produce identical notes. When
they can do this easily, additional pairs are added until they
can match entire sets.
A more difficult exercise challenges the children to
grade the bells of just one set by pitch, from the lowest to
highest notes. As they become more familiar with the bells,
children will commonly learn how to play and compose
little melodies.

The Pink Tower (left) is one
of the Sensorial materials that children enjoy working with early in their
Montessori experience. The Pink
Tower, or Tower of Cubes, is composed of a graduated series of ten
wooden cubes. The largest cube has
a square section of 10 centimeters
per side and is 10 centimeters high.
Thus, it measures 10 x 10 x 10 centimeters. The square section and
height of each of the succeeding
cubes decreases by 1 centimeter,
down to the smallest cube, which
measures 1 x 1 x 1 centimeter.
Children carefully carry the
Tower, cube by cube, to the little rug
that defines their work area. They
carry each cube comfortably at waist
height, as they take the cubes and
place them in random order upon
the carpet.
As they manipulate the cubes and
carry them across the room, children get a very strong impression of
size and weight. When all the cubes
have been carried to the rug, a child
looks for the largest one and begins
to build the Tower, one cube at a
time. At each step, he looks through
the cubes that have not yet been
added to the Tower to find the largest.
As each is placed on the Tower, the
child controls his movements to
place the cube gently down right in
the center of the larger cube on
which it is rested. Once the Tower
has been constructed, the child carefully takes it down and either begins again or returns the
cubes, one by one, to their proper place on the shelf.
Some people have heard that in Montessori, children are taught that there is only one way to
work with each material. In truth, the children
explore and discover all sorts of creative ways
to work with them. For example, students will
construct the Tower horizontally, or line up two
edges to create a vertical stairway. The children
will also build the Pink Tower in various combinations with the Brown Stair along with some of
the other Sensorial materials.

The Red Rods (above) are a series of ten
rods (thin rectangular prisms) of which the
height and width are uniform; however, they
range in length from 1 decimeter (10 centimeters) to a full meter (10 decimeters or 100
centimeters). The child scatters the rods around
her rug and looks for the longest.
As each is arranged next to the others in a
series, the child discovers the regular progression of length. The teachers introduce vocabulary: short, shorter, shortest; long, longer,
longest.
The Red Rods are exactly the same dimensions as the Red and Blue Rods in the Math
area, which help children learn to count by
showing the growth of quantity as length, distinguished by alternating patterns of red and
blue to represent each number.

The Cylinder Blocks (below)
are a set of four naturally finished (unpainted) rectangular blocks of wood,
into which have been cut ten cylindrical holes. Each hole is filled with a
matching wooden cylindrical inset, fitted with a little knob on the top to make
it easy for a child’s small hand to grasp
and lift it out of its perfectly fitted hole.
Each set of cylinders is constructed
to vary in a regular sequence by either
diameter, length, or both. The children
remove each cylinder in turn, carefully tracing its length and circumference
and the depth and circumference of
each hole with one finger.
Once all ten cylinders have been removed and placed on the rug, the children take each in turn and find the hole

Knobbed Cylinders

42

into which it fits perfectly, with the top of the cylinder
flush with the top of the cylinder block. If they’ve made
a mistake, the children can normally see it for themselves because all ten cylinders will not fit correctly.
The children quickly begin to challenge themselves
by attempting to ‘see’ which hole is likely to fit the cylinder in their hand rather than trying to fit each into one
hole after the other. After a while, they will begin to do
the same exercise with their eyes blindfolded, relying
on touch alone.
When they are ready for a greater challenge, the children will mix the cylinders from two, three, or all four
blocks together and try to fit them all into the corresponding holes.

The Knobless Cylinders (opposite page, top
left) correspond to the four Knobbed Cylinder Blocks.
With this material, each of these sets is painted red, yellow, blue, or green.
With no cylindrical holes, the children depend upon
sight or touch alone to arrange the cylinders.
Children will sometimes work with both the Knobless
Cylinders and the more familiar Knobbed Cylinders
from the Cylinder Blocks together (left), finding
the match between each brightly painted and unpainted cylinder in turn. By working with all four sets of
Knobless Cylinders together, children discover all sorts
of geometric patterns and progressions within the material.

The Sandpaper Tablets (below) are a set of wooden tablets covered with several different grades of
sandpaper. The challenge is to identify pairs that have the same degree
of roughness, working by touch
alone. An extension of these activities is commonly created by assembling a collection of pairs of cloth
swatches cut from many different
materials, each with its own texture.
Again, working with eyes blindfolded, the children attempt to find the
pairs by touch. Like all Montessori
exercises, there is a built-in control
of error. In this case, the children
learn to check their work by removing the blindfold and seeing if they
have identified the correct pair.

Sandpaper Tablets
Photo courtesy of Nienhuis

Another exercise begins with the Rough and Smooth Boards
(shown above), which have a surface that alternates between the roughness of
sandpaper and a smooth finished surface. The children wash their hands in
warm water before beginning to make them more sensitive.

The Color Tablets
help the child learn to distinguish among primary
and secondary colors and
tones, while mastering
the words used to describe each color and
shade. There are three
separate boxes of Color
Tablets. All of the tablets
have the same shape and
differ only in color.
The first box of Color
Tablets contains six
tablets, two each of yellow,
red, and blue. The children simply match the
pairs and learn the spoken names of the colors.
The second box of
Color Tablets contains
eleven pairs of secondary
colors and tones, which the children match and name.
The third box of Color Tablets contains seven different shades of nine different colors, which the children learn to sort in order from lightest to darkest shade. When all of the tablets are laid out in an array it creates a lovely display of color.
There are many ways in which the children and teachers can make the color tablets more challenging. For example, the children will try to find the tablet that is closest in color to something in the
environment. Another challenge is to give the child a color tablet from the third box and ask him to go
to the box and, by memory alone, bring back the tablet that is just one shade lighter or darker.

One of the children’s favorite activities is the
Mystery Bag or Box
(shown left). Normally, it
is simply a cloth bag or
box with a hole for their
hands in which they
touch and manipulate
objects that they cannot
see. One activity is to
place things that are familiar to the children inside and challenge them
to identify them by touch
alone.

The Geometric Solids

The Geometry Cabinet is essentially a set of puzzles made in the shapes of the essential plane geometric figures. It consists of six drawers, each of which is fitted with several wooden frames, inset with a geometric form. In addition to the familiar circle, square, and rectangle, the child is introduced to a much broader array of complex figures, from the right scalene
triangle to the decagon; and from ellipse to the curvilinear triangle through the quatrefoil.
In addition to removing the pieces and replacing them in their frames, children sequence
some shapes by size and classify other shapes by type.
They also learn how to match them against three sets
of printed cards that represent the same figures in increasing
degrees of abstraction. The first set represents each shape
completely colored in on the card in the same size as the
piece from the cabinet. The children simply cover each card
with the matching puzzle piece.
In the second set, the geometric shapes are printed as
outlines drawn with broad lines that leave the inner area
white. In the third set, the figures are simply traced with
thin lines. As children gradually begin to recognize the more
abstract representations of the three-dimensional objects,
they are preparing themselves to recognize the little lines and squiggles of the written word.
Gradually, children learn the names of each of the geometric shapes. Once children begin to
read and can verbally identify the shapes, they begin to label them with pre-printed name cards.
Eventually, the children will be able to prepare their own cards from scratch.
44

The logical basis for the Geometry Cabinet is
the set of Geometric Solids (pictured above
right and directly below). The children learn
the names of these beautiful wooden forms,
identifying them at first by sight and eventually when blindfolded.
The set includes a sphere, cube, rectangular prism, a square-based and broad pyramid, triangular pyramid, ovoid, ellipsoid, and
a cone. The children quickly begin to look for
each geometric form in their environment.
They also begin to discover the relationship
between the two-dimensional figures and the
solid forms: a circle is related to a sphere, a
square to a cube, etc.
As they begin to read, children will learn
to match Geometric Solids to a set of prepared
label cards. Eventually, they will be able to prepare their own. This early introduction to
geometry continues in the Elementary
Montessori program. After years of handson experience with geometric figures and other mathematical exercises, children normally find it very
easy to grasp
m o r e a dvanced concepts, from the
definitions of
geometric
terms to the
calculation of
area, volume,
and circumference.

The importance of
puzzles in the
Montessori approach
Every one who has worked with young
children, whether as parent or teacher,
knows how much they enjoy wooden
puzzles; however, most of us take puzzles more or less for granted and fail to
appreciate their hidden potential as an
educational tool. The puzzles that we
commonly give to young children depict little animals or cute scenes.
Dr. Montessori came to recognize
that the attraction of fitting the pieces of
a puzzle into the insets on their frames
lies in the process of manipulating an
object in all directions, and finally discovering the one and only correct way
that it will fit. There is more to all this
than simply the satisfaction of solving a
puzzle. Somehow, we find that young
children experience things that they
can touch and manipulate quite differently from a picture of something
printed on a piece of paper. In short,
the positive and negative insets of a
puzzle are much more real and interesting to a child than a simple two-dimensional picture.
In the Montessori classroom, puzzles are not only used to help children
learn to manipulate objects and assemble a complex whole from several
parts, they are used to introduce children to a tremendous range of concepts and vocabulary, from geometric
shapes to the countries of the world
and the parts of a flower.

The Binomial and
Trinomial Cubes
These cubes are two of the
most fascinating materials
in the Montessori curriculum. At one level, they are
simply a complex puzzle
in which the child is challenged to rebuild the cubes
and rectangular prisms
contained in the box back
into the form of a larger
cube. Color-coding on the
outside of the box and the
sides of certain pieces
helps the child detect the
pattern. The material is
also an exercise in algebra
and geometry, representing in concrete form the
cube of a binomial (a+b)3
(above left) and a trinomial (a+b+c)3 (below left)
where a=3 cm., b=4
cm., and c=5 cm.

Editorial Note: The materials described on these two pages may not seem to
the layperson to be Sensorial in nature, as much as algebraic or geometric. They
are, however, included in the Sensorial curriculum, because this is where
they are introduced to Montessori students in the early years.
The Constructive Triangles allow children to explore the geometric possibilities inherent within several different types of triangles. The
material consists of six boxes, each of which contains a set of brightly colored, flat wooden triangles, which can be manipulated like a puzzle to explore congruency and equivalence. For example, two right triangles joined
together along the hypotenuse form a rectangle. To help the young child
recognize the essential relationships, most of the triangles have a line
drawn along those
edges that join together
to form new figures,
such as rectangles,
squares, trapezoids,
and polygons.
Working with the
Constructive Triangles,
children explore how
various triangles can
form regular polygons
in geometry.
The young child at left is
working with the
Continent Puzzle.

n Part Two of our Guided Tour,
we will see how Montessori students move from the concrete
(the Early Childhood classroom)
to the abstract (the Elementary
classroom) in the areas of
Language, Math, History, Geography, Cultural Studies, and
Science.
Not all Montessori schools offer elementary programs, but in
the following pages, you will see
how the Montessori curriculum
in the older classrooms builds on
the foundation of the primary
level.
Tomorr o w’s Child has also explored, throughout the years,
how Montessori is used in infant/toddler and secondary programs. It is also being adapted for
use with Alzheimer’s patients.

he process of
learning
how to read
should be as
painless and simple as learning
how to speak.
Montessori begins
by placing the
youngest students
in classes where
the older students
are already reading. All children
want is to “do what
the big kids can
do,” and as the
intriguing work
that absorbs the
older students
involves reading,
there is a natural
lure for the young
child.

Beginning at age two or three, Montessori children are introduced
to a few letters at a time until they have mastered the entire alphabet. They trace each letter as it would be written, using two fingers
of their dominant hand. As they trace the letter’s shape, they receive
three distinct impressions: they see the shape of the letter, they feel
its shape and how it is written, and they hear the teacher pronounce
its sound.

The Sandpaper Letters (left) are a set of prepared wooden tablets in which each letter is printed in white sandpaper, glued down against a smooth colored background. Montessori’s research confirmed what observant parents have always known: Children learn best by
touch and manipulation, not by repeating what they are
told. Her manipulative approach to teaching children to
read phonetically is nothing short of simple brilliance
and should have long ago become a basic element in
every early childhood classroom around the world.

Sandpaper Letters
Children move from the Sandpaper Letters (above) to tracing
them in fine sand (above right and below). The teacher and child will
begin to identify words that begin with the kuh sound: cat, candle,
can, and cap. Seeing the tablets for the letters c, a, and t laid out before her, a child will pronounce each in turn — kuh, aah, tuh: cat!
To help children distinguish between them, consonants are printed
against pink or red backgrounds and vowels against blue.
Many Montessori classrooms use Sandpaper Letters that don’t follow the traditional circleand-line approach of
teaching a young child the
alphabet. Both cursive alphabets and D’Nelian letters (a modified form of
italic printing that facilitates the jump to cursive)
are available and used with
excellent results.
Montessori found that children in her schools were
capable of encoding words
months before they developed the eye-hand coordination needed to control a
pencil. By using specially
prepared moveable alphabets, Montessori separated
the process of beginning
to write from its dependency on the child’s ability
to write with paper and
Tracing Letters in Sand
pencil.
48

The Writing
Road to Reading
To help children develop the eye-hand coordination
needed to correctly grasp and write with a pencil,
Montessori introduced them to a set of metal frames
and insets made in the form of geometric shapes. When
the geometric inset is removed, the children trace the
figure left within the frame onto a sheet of paper. Then
they use colored pencils to shade in the outlines that
they’ve traced, using careful horizontal strokes.
Gradually, children become more skilled at keeping the
strokes even and staying within the lines. As they get
older, children begin to superimpose several insets
over each
other, creating complex
designs
which, when
colored in,
resemble
stained glass.
Montessori
children will
often prepare beautiful little
books of
their metal
Metal Insets
inset work.

Composing words
(articles and nouns)
with the Moveable
Alphabet
Montessori teaches basic
skills phonetically, encouraging children to compose their own stories using the Moveable
Alphabet. Reading skills
normally develop so
smoothly in Montessori
classrooms that students
tend to exhibit a sudden
“explosion into reading,”
which leaves the children
and their families beaming
with pride.
Another unusual result
of the Montessori approach is that young children will often be able to
write (encoding language
by spelling phonetic
words out one sound at a time), weeks or months before
they will be able to read comfortably (decoding printed
words).
Once children have begun to recognize several letters
and their sounds with the Sandpaper Letters, they are introduced to the Moveable Alphabet, a large box with compartments containing plastic letters, organized much like
an old-fashioned printer’s box of metal type. The children
compose words by selecting a small object or picture and
then laying out the word one letter at a time. As with the
Sandpaper Letters, they sound out words one letter at a
time, selecting the letter that makes that sound.
The phonetic approach, which has mysteriously fallen
out of favor in many schools, has long been recognized by
educators as the single most effective way to teach most
children how to read and write. However, we have to remember that, unlike Italian and Spanish, English is not a
completely phonetic language. Just consider the several
different sounds made by the letters ough. There is the
sound off as in cough, or ufff as in rough or enough, or
the sound oooh as in the word through, or the sound ah
as in thought. Altogether, there are some ninety-six different phonograms (combinations of letters that form distinct sounds) in the English language (such as ph, ee, ai,
oo, etc.).
It is not surprising that in the early years, as young children are beginning to compose words, phrases, sentences, and stories, their spelling can sometimes get a bit
creative. For example, the word phone is frequently
spelled fon. Montessori teachers deliberately avoid correcting children’s spelling during these early years, preferring to encourage them to become more confident in
their ability to sound words out rather than risk that they
will shut down from frequent correction.
The process of composing words with the Moveable
Alphabet continues for many years, gradually moving
from three-letter words to four- and five-letter words with
consonant blends (fl, tr, st), double vowels (oo, ee), silent
e’s, and so on.

NOTE: Many parents find it curious that Montessori children are not
taught the names of letters; instead, they learn the sounds that we
pronounce as we phonetically sound out words one letter at a time.
For a long time, children may not know the names of letters at all,
but will call them by the sounds they make: buh, cuh, aah, etc.
This eliminates one of the most unnecessary and confusing steps
in learning to read: “The letter A stands for apple. The sound it
makes is aah.”
As children begin to work with the Sandpaper Letters,
teachers will lead them through a wide range of pre-reading
exercises designed to help them recognize the beginning,
and later the ending and middle sounds in short phonetic
words. One common example would be a basket containing
three Sandpaper Letters, such as c, b, and f. In addition, the
basket will contain small inexpensive objects that are models
of things beginning with these letters. The basket described
above might contain little plastic objects representing a cat,
cap, can, bug, bag, bat, fish, fig, and fan (no consonant
blends). In another exercise, we will substitute little cards
with pictures instead of the small objects.
Cards with the names of familiar objects are commonly
found in most kindergartens. However, in Montessori, children take this much further, learning the names of and placing the appropriate labels on a bewildering array of geometric
shapes, leaf forms, the parts of flowers, countries of the
world, land and water forms, and much, much more.
Montessori children are known for their incredible vocabularies. Where else would you find four-year-olds who can identify an isosceles triangle, rectangular prism, the stamen of a
flower, or the continent of Asia on a map?
When will children start to read?
There is typically a quick jump from reading and writing single words to sentences and stories. For some children, this
“explosion into reading” will happen when they’re four, for
others when they’re five, and some will start to read at six. A
few will read even earlier, and some others will taken even
longer. Most will be reading very comfortably when they enter first grade, but children are different, and as with every
other developmental milestone, it’s useless to fret. Again, the
children are surrounded by older children who can read, and
the most intriguing things to do in the classroom depend on
one’s ability to read. This creates a natural interest and desire
to catch up to the
‘big kids’ and join
the ranks of readers. As soon as
children, no matter how young
they are, show
the slightest interest, we begin to
teach them how
to read. And
when they are
ready, the children pull it all together and are
able to read and
write on their
own.

Teaching Children the
Consonant Blends and
Phonograms of the
English Language
Montessori uses two sets of small
Moveable Alphabets, each made of a
different color, to help the children
master consonant blends, such as fl,
st, ch, cl, cr, or tr. A consonant blend
requires the child to blend two distinct letter sounds together into one,
as we do when we say flag or train.
fl ag
fl at
fl eet
fl ee
fl ing
fl ower
The child lays out several copies of
the consonant blend with one color
of the Moveable Alphabet. Then she
completes the words by adding the
remaining letters in the Moveable
Alphabet printed in the second color.
An example might be tr...ip, tr...ade,
tr...ain, and tr...iangle.
Phonograms are the combinations
of letters in the English language that
form new sounds on their own, such
as ee, ai, oa, oo, and o u. Some
phonograms, such as ow, can make
more than one sound. For example,
ow has one sound in tow and still another in down.
The children construct words containing phonograms using two
Moveable Alphabets just as they do
the Consonant Blends.
Montessori teachers will normally
prepare little booklets, each of which
contains many examples of one particular Consonant Blend or Phonogram.

The Verb Command Cards
One of the early reading exercises introduced to Montessori children once
they have begun to read are the Verb
Command Cards. This is a set of red
cards on which a single one-word
command (a verb) is printed.
Typically, two or three children will
do this work together as a little game.
They pick a card, read it, and perform
the command: hop, smile, yawn,
sleep, clap, sit, stand, wave, eat, drink,

50

The Study of Grammar & Sentence
Analysis
We begin to teachthe functions of grammar and sentence structure to children
as young as age five and six, just as they
are first learning how to put words together to express themselves. This leads
them to master these vital skills. Before
long, they learn to write naturally and
well.
Montessori Grammar Materials

(Above) This eight-year-old is analyzing the
grammatical structure of a complex sentence using the grammar symbols and the
grammar boxes.

Montessori children use geometric symbols to represent the parts of speech, as in the simple article, adjective, noun, verb, and
adverb sentence pictured below.
Montessori created a set of symbols to represent each part of speech, which helps
the children learn them easily during a time in their lives when it is a delight rather than
a chore. For example, the symbol for a noun is a large black triangle. Because they are
related to the “noun family,” the symbols for an article and an adjective are also triangles.
To distinguish them from the noun, which they modify, the symbol for an adjective
is a dark blue triangle about one-third smaller than the larger symbol for the noun, and
the symbol for an article is a much smaller light blue triangle.
The children will often call the noun a “naming word,” an adjective a “describing
word,” a verb a “doing word,” and so on. The symbol for a verb is a large red circle (implying a ball, or movement, since verbs describe action), and the symbol for an adverb
is a smaller orange circle, showing that it is
related to the verb.

Puzzle Words: Some words,
most of which have come to
English from other languages,
just don’t follow the familiar
rules. Examples of Puzzle Words
are: the, was, you, they, and their.
They have to be learned by
memory.
This young lady is diagramming a simple
sentence with the first sentence-analysis
materials.

and so on. Once they can read these
one-word command cards, later sets will
use complete sentences to command
them to, “Bring me the smallest cube
from the Pink Tower,” or, “Waddle
across the room like a duck.”
Command Cards are used with older
children to suggest specific challenges
in every area of the curriculum. For example, in Geography, a Command Card
might challenge the child to look in the
atlas to find the location of the largest inland lake on the Earth.

The Verb Command Cards have a simple
one-word command (verb) printed on
them. (Above) This little boy has just read
the word wave and is acting out the command.

During the elementary years, Montessori focuses on the development of strong
writing skills and library research. The curriculum does not depend on textbooks, as
much as on primary and secondary resource materials found in classroom library
collections, media centers, public libraries, and on the Internet. Elementary
Montessori students commonly use reference materials and public records to seek
out additional information when they are doing research. Students write every day,
learning to organize increasingly complex ideas and information into well-written
stories, poems, reports, plays, and student publications. They begin a systematic
study of the English language: vocabulary, spelling rules, and linguistics. Montessori
schools commonly teach elementary and middle school students how to use the
computer to write, illustrate, and lay out their work.
Literature

(Above) Montessori students often make dioramas of
books they have read to help make the story come alive.
Look at the detail in this young lady’s effort.

The key to the Montessori
language arts curriculum
is the quality of the material children are given to
read.
Very young students
are introduced to first-rate
children’s literature and
fascinating reference materials on science, history,
geography, and the arts.
In an increasing number
of Montessori schools,
students begin the Junior
Great Books Program in
kindergarten, and literary
studies continue every
year thereafter.

ontessori students use handson learning materials that
make abstract concepts clear
and concrete. They can literally see and explore what is going on. This approach to
teaching mathematics, based
on the research of Drs. Maria
and Mario Montessori, offers a
clear and logical strategy for
helping students understand
and develop a sound foundation in mathematics and
geometry.

The Montessori Math curriculum is based on the European
tradition of Unified Math,
which has only recently begun
to be incorporated into the
American math curriculum.
Unified Math introduces elementary students to the study
of the fundamentals of algebra, geometry, logic, and statistics along with the principles of arithmetic. This study
continues over the years,
weaving together subjects that
traditional schools normally
ignore until the secondary
grades.
The concrete Montessori Math
materials are perhaps the best
known and most imitated elements of Dr. Montessori’s
work. These elegant and simply lovely materials hold a fascination for most children and
adults alike.
They proceed through several
levels of abstraction, beginning with concepts and skills
that are the most basic foundations of mathematics, presented in the most concrete
representation, up through
the advanced concepts of secondary mathematics, which
are represented in increasing
levels of abstraction, until the
student grasps them conceptually.

The Red and Blue Rods (shown on opposite page) are the child’s introduction to mathematics.
These rods have the same dimensions as the Red Rods found in the Sensorial area. Here, however, the
rods are painted in alternating patterns of red and blue to distinguish their length in segments of one
tenth of a meter (a decimeter). The first rod is one decimeter long and is just painted red. The second is
two decimeters long, and is divided into two segments, one red and one blue. This continues through all
ten rods.
As with the Red Rods, the children arrange the Red and Blue Number Rods into a stair from largest to
smallest. Then they count each alternating colored segment. One of the insights that children begin to get
from working with the rods is the nature of addition. For example, when the children place the “one”
number rod at the end of the “two” rod, they create a new rod that is the same length as the “three” rod
just above. They explore similar relationships with all of the numbers 1 to 10. For example, they discover
that the “four” and the “six” together are the same length as the “ten.”
Montessori found that young children find it difficult in the beginning to grasp the concept of numbers
by counting separate objects. While they can learn to “count” by rote, reciting the sequence of numbers
from one to ten, most cannot easily grasp the difference between one quantity and another when looking
at more than three or four objects. It’s almost as if they are thinking: “One, two, three... Many!” This is
easily avoided by allowing children to visualize the concept of numbers and quantity by using this series of
segmented rods of increasing length in the beginning, rather than trying to teach them to count sets of
separate objects.
The children also use the sandpaper numeral cards to label each number rod. These tablets are designed and used in the same way as the Sandpaper Letters described in the section on Language Arts.

The Spindle Boxes (right)
provide a nicely structured way
for young children to make the
next step in understanding the
concepts of numbers and
quantity.
The material is made up of
two wooden boxes, which together are divided into ten
compartments. The compartments are labeled with the numerals from zero through
nine. In a separate box or basket are forty-five wooden spindles used for counting.
The exercise calls for the
child to count the correct
number of spindles to go in
each compartment: one, two,
three ... all the way to nine.
Naturally, the compartment labeled “zero” is left empty,
teaching the child at a very early age the concept of zero as an
empty set. If the child has
counted correctly, there will
not be any spindles left over
when she fills up the compartment labeled “nine.”
One lovely variation of this
activity challenges the young
child to create a distinct set for
each number, while practicing bow-tying skills by tying a green ribbon (green symbolizes the
concept of units - whole numbers less than ten) around the clustered spindles. Then this bundle is placed in the correct compartment.

The Numeral
Cards and
Counters
(Right)
After considerable experience
with the more
structured introductions to number and quantity
created by the
Red and Blue
Number Rods
and the Spindle
Boxes, children
are finally ready to tackle the task of associating cards on which the numerals
have been printed with objects to count. They begin by arranging the numeral
cards in order from one to ten.
Then they begin to count out the appropriate number of counters, placing
them in parallel rows of two after the number one.
Even numbers end with an even number of counters in the bottom row; odd
numbers only have one. This begins to focus their attention on the concept of
odd and even numbers.
The Numeral Cards and Golden Beads (Below)
This special set of numeral cards is used to help the children learn to read numerals up to 9,999. Used to label the units, tens, hundreds, and thousands
in which the Golden Beads are laid out, they help children begin to understand the concept of the hierarchy of the decimal quantities and how we borrow and carry from the next column in mathematical operations. The large
size of the cards and the color coding used to represent units, tens, hundreds,
and thousands makes it easy for children to understand how large quantities are
constructed from right to left, read from left to right, and worked within vertical
columns. The children shown below are using the Golden Beads and Numeral
Cards to add two quantities : 4,877 + 2,469 = 7,346.

54

Dr. Montessori developed a wonderful educational material called the Golden
Beads to illustrate concretely the nature of
place value in the decimal system and its
basic operations. The name comes from
the beautiful color used for the enamel
finish on this set of small glass beads.
A single bead by itself represents a unit
of one. Thus, the number 5 would be represented by a collection of five “unit”
beads.
Ten “unit” beads strung together on a
length of wire represents a unit of
ten. Three
“10” bars
collected
together
actually consists of thirty “unit”
beads, or three “10s.” The
children quickly discover that ten
“unit” beads are exactly the same as
one “10” bar. They also begin to count
not only the individual “unit” beads but
by units of ten: 10, 20, 30 ... 100.
Ten “10” bead bars naturally equal
the quantity of one hundred. Units of one
hundred are made up of ten “10” bead
bars laid side by side and wired together
to form a square.
Ten “100” squares stacked one on top
of the other form a cube containing one
thousand “unit” beads. They are permanently wired together to form the thousand cube. Using these concrete materials, even very young children can build
and work with great numbers. In a typical
early lesson with the Golden Beads, the
teacher might challenge the child to,
“Bring me three ‘1,000s,’ five ‘100s,’
six ‘10s,’ and one ‘unit.’” While they will
also work with prepared problem cards,
children often enjoy thinking up numbers
for themselves.

The Short Bead Stair
(above)
Using the Golden Bead material, the child sees the numbers
one through nine represented
as individual units. But, as we
mentioned earlier, although
the child can count the beads
one at a time, it takes many
years before most children
can recognize and really understand the idea of number
except by one-to-one correspondence.
To help the child truly begin to grasp the idea of quantities from one through nine,
Dr. Montessori prepared a set
of colored glass beads, in
which each quantity is represented by the appropriate
number of individual beads
wired together as a bar with a
specific, easily recognizable
color. In this material, a “1” is
represented by a single red
bead; a “2” by two green
beads strung together; the “3”
by three pink beads, and so
on up through the ten Golden
Beads that represent a unit of
ten. The children work with
the Short Bead Stair for many
years, using the material to
add and subtract, carry, borrow, explore multiples, and
for many other arithmetic
processes. For example, to
multiply 9 x 8, the children
would lay out eight “9” bars or
nine “8” bars. By counting the
result, they can check their
work.

This material is made up of
two different sets of boards
that children use to explore
the nature of quantities and
numbers greater than nine.
Each set consists of two
boards, which are laid in a
vertical row. The two boards
are divided into nine sections, each of which is fitted
with a thin frame into which
the children can slide wooden cards on which the numbers 1 through 9 have been printed. Numbers have also been printed on the surface of
the board, spaced so that when the cards are slid into the frame they will cover up one of
the two digits.
On the Teens Boards, the number 10 is printed in the nine spaces created by the
frames. The children arrange the number cards from 1 to 9 in order, and slide them into
the frames, creating the numbers 11, 12, 13... and so on through 19.
Using the “Ten Bead Bars” and the Short Bead Stair material described earlier, the children lay out the numbers 11 through 19 concretely.
For example, the number eighteen would be formed by placing one ten bar in the
tens column and one brown eight bar in the unit column. This gives them a very clear
picture of how the teens are formed and written: ten and one is eleven, ten and two is
twelve, etc.
On the Tens Boards, the numbers 10, 20, 30, 40 through 90 are printed in the nine
spaces created by the frames. They use the individual number cards to form numbers in
the tens, such as 53, 24, 79, etc. and use the Golden Bead tens and unit beads to build
their concrete representations along side.

The Hundred Board (right)
The Hundred Board challenges the young
child who can count aloud from one to one
hundred to lay out the numerals in the same
sequence.
The Board is a square divided into ten
rows with ten small squares along each row.
The children work with a set of one hundred
wooden tiles that are labeled from one
through one hundred.
Students spread the tiles out on the rug,
arrange them in numerical order, and place
them, one tile at a time, on the Hundred
Board, working from the upper left-hand corner along each row to
the right, down to next
row, and so on until
complete.
When they are comfortable with this, they attempt the same exercise
by filling in the squares
on a blank chart drawn
to duplicate the surface
of the Hundred Board.

The Square &
Cube Chains
Following the same concept, the Square and Cube
Chains introduce the child
to the concept of skip
counting by ones, twos,
threes, fours, etc. through
tens. Each chain is constructed by connecting multiples of the Short Bead
Stair, using the same color
scheme that the children
learned before: red “units,”
green “2” bead bars, pink “3”
bead bars, etc. The material
also introduces the children
to the concept of the
squares and cubes of the
numbers one through ten.
There are two chains for
each number: one set representing the squares of the
numbers one through ten,
and the other representing
the cubes. Thus, the square
of five is shown as a chain of
five “5” bead bars (5 squared
= 25) and the cube as a
chain of twenty-five “5” bead
bars (5 cubed=125).
The material also includes a set of bead bars
connected to show the
squares and cubes of the
numbers as actual squares
and cubes. The children use
the bead chains to skip
count, working with number arrows similar to those
used with the Hundreds and
Thousand Chains.
56

The “bank” is a name given to a collection of
Golden Bead materials, which includes enough
“units,” “10” bars, “100” squares, and “1,000”
cubes to allow several children to create large
numbers.
In one of the first exercises, the children explore the equivalencies of the decimal system.
They learn that ten “units” can be exchanged
at the bank for a “10” bar, and that a “10” bar
can be exchanged for ten “units.” They also find
that ten “10s” can be exchanged for a “100”
square, ten “100s” for one “1,000,” and that
each can, in turn, be broken down into its
equivalent in the smaller quantity.
Using the Golden Bead material, the children can build two or more large numbers and
add them together. By going through the steps
of addition in this very concrete manner, the
children have a clear impression about what
addition means. They also come to understand the process of exchanging, as they count the new quantities in each of the columns
and trade in groups of ten “units” for one “10” bar, which they place
in the “10s” columns; ten “10” bars for one “100”; and ten “100s”
for one “1,000.”
Once they understand how to add with the Golden Beads,
Montessori children begin to use them to multiply, subtract, and
divide. For example, to divide the quantity 3,333 by three, a child
would set out three wooden skittles, and, beginning with the largest
quantity, in this case the “1,000” cubes, he gives one “1,000” to each
skittle. He continues on with the “100s,” “10s,” and “units.”
If the child were
challenged to divide this same
quantity by four, he
would begin by exchanging the three
“1,000s” for thirty
“100s” squares, add
them to the stack
of three “100s,” and
then he would distribute them equally. After placing
eight “100s” beneath each of the
four skittles, he exchanges the remaining one “100”
for ten “10” bars.
This process of exchanging continues
until the final answer is derived:
eight “100s,” three
“10s,” three “units,”
with a remainder of
one “unit.”

The Short Multiplication (above) and Division Boards
(below) offer other pathways to abstraction with these
two operations.
Using the Multiplication Board (shown above), children lay
out individual unit beads on a board organized into nine rows
of nine shallow holes. They lay out the beads in rows. For example, 4 x 8 would be eight columns of four beads per column.
The Division Board (below) is similar, except that here
each vertical column of shallow holes represents one equal
share, where a quantity is divided into two or more groups.
The child places one small skittle at the top of each column to
mark the number
of shares that will
be in her divisor;
to divide 24 by 6,
she begins by placing 6 skittles along
the top. Then she
counts out the
number of beads
that she wants to
divide and begins
to distribute them,
placing one bead
in each hole from
the top left to right
and then down a
row, until she finally has shared her
quantity equally
among the vertical
columns. Any
beads left over are
her “remainder.”

As the children become more and more comfortable with the
Golden Beads, they eventually begin to ask whether there is anything smaller than the unit. The Fraction Skittles, and many experiences in the classroom, gradually introduce them to the concept
of a quarter, half, and whole.
The Fraction Circles take this concept much further. It is a set
of ten metal frames into which are set ten circles: one left intact;
one divided into two parts; another into thirds, fourths, fifths
through tenths.
The children learn the terminology, how to write fractions out
as figures, and begin to explore first the concepts of equivalence
(2/4 = 1/2) and basic operations with fractions (1/2 + 2/4=1).

The Snake Game helps students to learn how to quickly make exchanges
among different quantities that make up the number ten and higher. The
game is played by laying out a snake using the colored bead bars (which represent the numbers 1 to 9 as rods of colored bead bars, with each quantity represented by beads of a different color). The children begin counting from the
start of the chain, noting when they reach the number 10, and removing the
beads that have been counted. At this point they need to replace the counted
beads with a Golden Ten
Bead Bar, and add in a new
bead bar that represents the
quantity left over. Let’s imagine that the first 3 beads in
the “Snake” were a 5 bead
bar, a 3 bead bar, followed
by a 6 bead bar. When the
child has replaced these 3
bead bars with a 10 bar, the
original beads added up to
14. To leave the same beads
in the Snake as where they
were at the start, they add a
4 bead bar after the golden
10 bead bar that they just
laid down. They continue replacing all the beads in the
Snake with Golden Bead
Bars, until the Snake has
been turned from many colors to one that is completely
golden, except for any quantity that remained.

The Stamp Game
The Stamp Game represents the first
step on the Second Plane of Abstraction in the Montessori Math curriculum. Where in the First Plane, the
Golden Beads and Colored Bead Bars
concretely represented quantities as
three dimensional objects, the materials used in the second plane are much
more abstract. At this level they are essentially tokens, symbolic counters
identical in size and differing only in
color and in how they are labeled, but
which represent different quantities.
The Stamp Game is a box containing
little wooden tiles (originally Montessori used paper squares that looked
like postage stamps). Some are colored green and labeled “1” to show
that they are units. Some are colored
blue and labeled “10” to show that
each represents a set of ten units.
Some are colored red and labeled
“100,” and the last set is colored green
and labeled “1,000” to show that each
represents a unit of 1,000 units.
The children use the Stamps just
like they did the Golden Beads, laying
out quantities using the symbolic tokens and adding them together, sub58

tracting, multiplying, and
dividing. By this level, the
children are normally writing their work out on paper and using the Stamps
to help them visualize the
process.
For example, to subtract 822 from 1,000, the
child would create four
rows of stamps, beginning
on the left with the thousands, then the hundreds,
the tens, and the units. In
to the top row she would
place a single thousand stamp in the
thousand column. Below, she would
place nothing in the thousand column,
eight hundred stamps in the hundred
column, two ten stamps in the tens column, and two units in the unit column.
Beginning with the units, the child
seeks to take two stamps away from the
quantity above in that column. Since the
column is empty, she turns to the row
to the left (the tens), which is also empty. She finds that her only choice is to
exchange the one thousand stamp for
10 hundreds, which she places in the

hundreds column. Now she can exchange one of the hundreds for 10 tens,
which she places in the tens column.
Finally, she is ready to borrow from the
tens column to solve her problem. She
exchanges one ten from the tens column and exchanges it for 10 units and
places them in the unit column in the
top row. From this ten, she takes away
two, leaving 8 units. This process continues, until she finds that her top row contains the correct answer: no thousands,
1 hundred, 7 tens, and 8 units ( 1,000 822 = 178).

Montessori introduces children to
pre-algebraic concepts at the early
childhood level through concrete
materials such as the squares and
cubes of the numbers 1 to 10 illustrated by the materials of the Bead
Cabinet and the Binomial and
Trinomial Cube. At the upper elementary level, students use the
Cubing Material (sometimes called
the Polynomial Box) to continue a
more advanced exploration of the
nature of polynomials and the relationships between their component parts. Where, with the
Trinomial Cube, which represents
the polynomial (A+B+C)3, and in
which the three component elements were fixed by the material’s
design as 2 cm, 3 cm, and 4 cm [(a
+ b + c) 3 = a3 + b3 + c3 + 3a2b
+ 3a2c + 3ab2 + 3b2c + 3bc2 +
3ac2 + 6abc], the Cubing Materials
consist of one cube and twenty seven wooden squares (1 cm high) for
each of the quantities from 1 to 9
(shown as squares) from the one
cm cube to a square of 2 cm, 3 cm,
up through 9 cm, contained in a
special box to keep everything organized. Using the Cubing Material,
students can build binomials, trinomials, quatrinomials, and larger
polynomials, varying the values for
the component parts. This is all designed to help students grasp prealgebraic concepts at an abstract
level.

By this stage the children are recording
their work on paper, although many
won’t be able to solve the same problems if asked to work with paper and
pencil alone without the visual aid of the
Montessori materials. You have to remember that most young children under the age of seven or eight find it difficult, if not impossible, to grasp something as abstract as quantities above
three and what’s really happening when
we add, subtract, multiply, or divide.
The concrete Montessori materials
make it possible for the child to see and
understand, slowly internalizing each
concept until it becomes fixed and clear
in her mind.
Naturally, children can’t depend on
the materials forever. Can you see your
child at age sixteen walking in to take
the SATs carrying the Golden Beads? Dr.
Montessori compared them to an airport runway which provides a smooth
surface on which the plane can roll
faster and faster until its built up enough
speed to fly.
The entire purpose of the Montessori Math curriculum is to make the abstract concrete, until a child can close
her eyes and visualize mathematical
processes at work. Step by step, the materials become less concrete and more
symbolic. Step by step, she is challenged
to demonstrate her understanding by
teaching what she’s learned to younger
children, which also tends to reinforce
and clarify the tutor’s grasp on the sub-

ject as much as teach something to the
one being tutored.
Montessori uses a wide range of parallel materials and exercises to help children extend their knowledge and gradually memorize the basic math facts that
every one of us is expected to know. As
parents, you will eventually begin to
hear about materials with odd names
like the Snake Game (see page 58), the
Addition and Subtraction Strip Boards,
and the Negative Snake Game.

The boy shown above is working on mastering
his addition facts with the Addition Strip
Board, one of the tools used to help children
memorize their math facts.

59

Space doesn’t allow us to describe
every one of the Montessori Math materials, but your child would probably
be delighted to introduce them to
you.
There is also an involved series of
Memorization Charts and associated
exercises that help the children in
their final stages of mastering the addition, subtraction, multiplication,
and division charts.

(Above) The Multiplication Checkerboard is another more advanced material that introduces Long Multiplication.
When the children have begun to show that they are
ready for still more abstract
exercises, they’re introduced
to another series of Math
Materials at the Second Plane
of Abstraction.
For example, the Bead
Frames (or abacus) challenge the child to solve problems in a slightly more abstract process.
The Short Bead Frame
(shown left) allows the child
to work with quantities up to
9,999.
The Long Bead Frame
uses quantities as large as
9,999,999.
The Flat Bead Frame
(shown left) represents the final step in the passage to abstraction with multiplication.
It contains nine columns of
Golden Beads with a zero at
the base of each column.
Color-coded dots representing the numerical hierarchies
are found along the side of
the Frame. The white, grey,
and black strips along the top
indicate the units of numbers: 1, 1,000, 1,000,000.
60

This older elementary student is exploring how the area of a plane geometric figure is calculated.
(Above, below, and left)) At the elementary
level, the children move on beyond learning the names of geometric figures to mastering the definitions as well. They also begin to construct geometric forms with a
protractor and compass.

(Left) The Long
Division Material
(Racks and Tubes)
allows the children to
solve complex problems in long division.
It’s not unusual for elementary students to
work through problems using numbers
much larger than a
trillion.

(Above) Geometry continues on from its
early introduction in the Sensorial curriculum into the elementary level. These students are exploring angles and the construction of different geometric figures.

Geometric Figures
At the elementary level, the children move
on beyond learning the names of geometric
figures to mastering the definitions as well.
They also begin to construct geometric
forms with a protractor and compass.

e are all members of the human family. Our
roots lie in the distant past, and history is the
story of our common heritage. Without a strong
sense of history, we cannot begin to know who we are
as individuals today. Our goal is to develop a global
perspective, and the study of history and world cultures forms the cornerstone of the Montessori curriculum.
With this goal in mind, Montessori teaches history
and world cultures starting as early as age three. The
youngest students work with specially designed maps
and begin to learn the names of the world’s continents and countries.
Physical geography begins in the first grade with a
study of the formation of the Earth, the emergence of
the oceans and atmosphere, and the evolution of life.
Students learn about the world’s rivers, lakes,
deserts, mountain ranges, and natural resources.
62

Montessori’s integrated thematic
curriculum allows a broad scope
of study in the areas of history, geography, and cultural studies.
The children also study the
emergence of human beings during the old and new stone ages,
the development of the first civilizations, and the universal needs
common to all humanity. For older elementary students, the focus
is respectively on early man, ancient civilizations, and earlyAmerican history (or the early history of the many other countries
in which Montessori schools are
found).
Montessori tries to present a
sense of living history at every level through direct hands-on experi-

Montessori Globes

ences. Students build models of
ancient tools and structures, pre-

The Land & Water Globe
and the Continent Globe

pare their own manuscripts, make
ceremonial masks, and recreate all
sorts of artifacts of everyday life of
historical eras. Experiences such
as these make it much easier for
Montessori children to appreciate
history as it is taught through
books.
While Montessori schools are
communities apart from the outside world, in which children can
first begin to develop their unique

These two special globes (shown right)
are used to introduce physical geography. The first is used to teach the idea of
how land areas and water are represented on a Globe. Land is shown as rough
brown area; water is smooth blue surface areas. The second introduces the
seven continents. Each is shown in a distinct color. Children learn the names
and location of each continent. The color code used on the Continent Globe is
carried on with the Puzzle Map of the
World and in early work in continent
studies.

talents, they are also consciously
connected to the local, national,
and global communities. The goal
is to lead each student to explore,
understand, and grow into full and
active membership in the adult
world. Field trips provide opportunities to explore the world outside the classroom. Younger elementary children often use simplified research card material and
charts in their studies.

The Big Bang
History begins with the “Big Bang” and the formation of the universe and,
within it, of our solar system. Children start with the story of how the world
began, how it began to cool, the formation of the atmosphere and oceans,
and the emergence of life. They study the story of life on Earth up through the
geological eras to the last ice ages and the emergence of the earliest humans.
Shown on the opposite page is a photo taken years ago at Wilmington
Montessori School (Delaware). This teacher uses a balloon filled with
sparkling glitter to demonstrate the “Big Bang.” The balloon is tossed into the
air and then pricked with a tack attached to a stick. The balloon explodes and
glitter goes everywhere. A universe is born!

The Imaginary
Island Puzzle
The Imaginary Island Puzzle (shown below) introduces students in elementary
classes to thirty-eight land and water
forms. They study vocabulary and definitions of such words as isthmus, butte, tributary, archipelago, bight, lagoon, and
more. Children also learn to plot longitude
and latitude and analyze the flora and fauna of a region. With the use of eighty-four
puzzle pieces, students are able to create
an infinite variety of islands of their own
design, modifying them at will, and reinforcing vocabulary words during the
process.

What would you do
if you could create
your own little
world? The
Imaginary Island allows Montessori
students to
explore the
possibilities.
Chelsea Howe
The Montessori
F ou
n
d
a
t
i
o
n

I

remember that a smile swept across my
face as I received the instructions for
our next class assignment: “Imaginary
Island” was written in bold letters at the
top of the page. As we were directed, we
would be responsible for creating an entire island which owed its entire existence directly to
whatever I proposed.
I was in the sixth grade, and I had always
had an overactive imagination, so, when our
teachers actually assigned us a project that not
only allowed us to be creative, but assumed
that we were creative, I thought I had struck
gold.
Little did I know, however, that making this
so- called island was far harder than just deciding where the island would be located and
64

Class Notes
how it might look. I envisioned planting one
single palm tree smack-dab in the center of
sand, to only further consider that an entire
ecosystem, among other things, would not
be able to live off of one lonely tree. So, I
had to consider what other vegetation might
exist on this island.
Hmmm… this really did put my brain to
the test. I explored the notion that all kinds
of plants, vegetables, and trees would exist
on this island, though I would not allow the
celery plant to exist, because I detested holidays where we politely ate celery—still,
those stringy threads make me wonder
what’s to like about celery.
So, I covered the vegetation ecosystem
issue, even decided upon a location close
enough to the equator that it would allow
for growth. I question, however, how global
warming might have affected my choices,
had I been assigned the project now. It was
time to move on to other factors: What
would the education system look like, the
government, the family system, and so on?
This project, while using great creativity,
turned out to be far more difficult than I had
thought. It actually required logic.
In the end, I chose to include things that
gave me comfort and security. The family
system, for example, I recall resembled my
own family—fairly complicated but extremely accepting, loving, and understanding—allowing that phrase “it takes a village to raise
a child” to really exist. I also remember the
government being optimal—in that, it represented the interests of all the people, not
just those that had more advantages than
others. I didn’t even think about the fact
that everyone should have quality healthcare because, at that age, I thought everyone
had healthcare—it was the only world I
knew, and I liked it that way. I believed in
work, still do, but believed that those who
could not work, for whatever reason, would

remain cared for and secure. I didn’t even have
to think about a defense system because 9/11
wasn’t even on our radar at that point. It pains
me to think that children are bombarded by
such challenges today. I wonder, had I been assigned the project now, would I have allocated
certain funds and protections that I, otherwise,
had not thought of?
This assignment taught me so much.
Reflecting back on it, perhaps it taught me too
much. Still, I appreciate that I could, as a child,
live in such a state that I believed our conditions
were great enough that I might want to replicate certain things in my own island. It certainly
made me look at things that perhaps I paid little
attention to, previously. This, I believe, is still
the purpose of the Imaginary Island project. It
allows children to still live in this imaginative
state, devoid of worry. But, it also encourages
children to look at things and recognize they
may need changes. It gives them an opportunity, even for one assignment, to change the
world to make it better. Montessori provides
this, nurtures it even. This assignment, for me,
has lasted a lifetime.
In spite of the dangers and challenges we
face in this world, I still believe (whether naively
or not) that the world is a good place and offers
hope. I believe we, as Montessori children, can
foster these changes and create them, both big
and small. We must encourage our children to
continue to use their imaginations and creativity
to make such differences—and we can.
As I received my project back, I was most astounded and appreciative to have received
compliments on my assignment (yes, this TypeA, perfectionistic girl still remains). But, still to
this day, I have an argument to pick — a certain
teacher was a bit skeptical about my chosen
transportation system: a belly-button transporter system that magically warps people from
one place to another in seconds. It made sense
to me—still does. If now, I can only find a way
to make it work. Yes, imagination still exists—
choose to foster it and embrace it.

(Above) A lower-elementary student at work with the Time Line of
Life on the Earth. The children also study the emergence of the first
civilizations and the universal needs common to all humanity. For
older elementary students, the focus is respectively on early humans,
ancient civilizations, and early-American history (in the USA).

These students (right and
below) are working with
the Land and Water
Forms, a set of three-dimensional models that
represent, in very simple
terms, the nature of basic
geographic features. This
is also a pouring exercise,
as the child adds water to
the tray to create a higher
level of sensory impression. Here she explores
the idea that an island is a
body of land surrounded
by water, while a lake is a
body of water surrounded on all sides by land.
The children learn to name each form, match the model with a photo of a real
lake or island, place the correctly printed label underneath each form, then prepare
their own labels. They also learn the definitions of each land form, continue to learn
about the largest lakes or islands in the
world, and research facts about specific
places.
The first set includes such geographic
forms as an isthmus, peninsula, cape, bay,
and strait. Advanced exercises introduce
more complex geographic features, such as
mountains, mountain ranges, volcanoes,
archipelagos, foothills, cliffs, mesas, prairies,
river valleys, and river deltas.

Birthdays are celebrated
by a walk around the sun
holding a globe of the
Earth to mark each year
of the child’s life.

The Pin Maps (below)
challenge the children to
begin to master the names
of the countries, capital
cities, and flags of the
countries of several continents. Each label is printed
on a card attached to a
thin pin, which is placed in
the appropriate hole on
the map. A set of control
charts allows the children
to check their own work.

(Above) This young lady is working with a model of
the inner core of the Earth.

(Right) As part of the National Model Cities
Competition, these students from Westwood School
in Dallas, Texas are designing a three-dimensional
diorama. The competition involves more than just a
model; the students must also develop an urban
plan, including: transportation, recreation, energy
use, and more. This is an annual event for
Westwood students, who have been national winners in the past.
66

CULTURAL STUDIES
Cultural studies continue at every age level in
Montessori education. The curriculum integrates art,
music, dance, cooking, geography, literature, and science. Children learn to prepare and enjoy dishes from
all over the world. They learn traditional folk songs
and dances in music and explore folk crafts in art. In
Language Arts, they read the traditional folk tales and
research and prepare reports about the countries they
are studying that year. Units of study often culminate
in marvelous international holidays and festivals that
serve as the high points of the school year.

Exploring the Elements
This elementary student
(right) is exploring the elements. He is constructing
models of the atomic structure of one element, placing
protons and neutrons in the
nucleus and electrons in the
outer shells.
Working with this unique
teaching version of Mendelev’s Periodic Table of the
Elements (above), elementary children begin to learn
about the more complex
elements, their symbols,
and how various elements are grouped
together according
to their properties.
At the same time,
children are looking
for examples of
common elements
in their daily environment and beginning to research
information about
the characteristics
and uses of the elements.

The young lady below is researching the planets of
our Solar System, using reference materials and
models of the planetary bodies. Child-sized planets(left) show the location and size of the planets in
comparison to the sun.

This young lady is studying the five kingdoms.

The Clock of Eras
The elementary students shown above are
working with the Clock of Eras. This more
advanced exercise presents the great geological eras of the Earth’s history as a pie graph
or clock face. The children label each geological era, from the formation of the Earth to
the present day. In earlier exercises, they’ve
begun to study what was happening on the
Earth’s surface during each era.

Sophisticated science equipment
enables young students to study the
unseen world up close.
69

A

rt is not a separate area of the Montessori curriculum; it is an integral component.
Throughout the day, even the youngest students are surrounded by the beauty of the materials and activities that Dr. Montessori developed for each developmental level. From the
smooth, simple elegance of the Geometric Solids to the ever-increasing complexities of drawing using the Metal Insets, Montessori uses all of the children’s senses to promote an awareness and
appreciation of the beauty in all things — animate and inanimate.
In the early years, children are free to
spend quiet moments in a special art corner
of their classroom: painting, drawing, or
working with age-appropriate
crafts. Some Montessori
schools will employ the talents
of an art specialist, and many
schools expand on their art
programs through special after-school workshops.
Older students will incorporate art into their lessons
when studying history, science,
math, and international cultures. Art and music appreciation are re-introduced in
greater depth throughout the years, and students of all ages enjoy performing in dramatic and musical productions for their families and at special school-wide celebrations.

The
Arts

Health, Wellness, & Physical Education
M

ontessori schools are very interested in helping children develop control of
their fine- and gross-motor movements. For young children, programs will
typically include dance, balance and coordination exercises, and loosely
structured cardiovascular exercise, as well as the vigorous free play that is
typical on any playground.
With elementary and older students, the ideal Montessori Health, Physical
Education, and Athletics program is typically very unlike that of the traditional model of “gym.” It challenges each student and adult in the school community to develop a personal program of lifelong exercise, recreation, nutrition, and health management.

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